I've had a sensitive stomach since I was little. Through primary school, middle school, and high school, I saw countless doctors and took countless medicines, but it never really got better. Anything cold or spicy would leave me bloated, with acid reflux and nausea. Even when I ate properly, nerves before an exam or interview could make me feel sick.
Then, strangely enough, almost all of those symptoms disappeared during my undergraduate years. Cold food, spicy food, heavy drinking: none of it bothered me. A miracle!
After I started working, my habits became even more ridiculous. The company was fairly relaxed about when we arrived in the morning, so I stayed up late every night. For three years, I hardly ever went to bed before 3 a.m. I drank almost every day, too. At first I'd mix drinks, vodka with orange juice and so on, somewhere in the teens in terms of alcohol percentage. As my tolerance grew, that stopped being enough, and I switched to straight whisky, around 150–300 ml a day. That went on for another two years.
I have to say, my liver is one tough guy.
My stomach gave out before my liver did. About a month and a half ago, I started getting frequent nausea, dizziness, and that awful feeling of wanting to throw up, especially after meals. I'd eat, then vomit. I lost almost 5 kg in half a month 😓. Add in all the worrying, made much worse by looking up symptoms online, and I couldn't take it anymore. I had two gastroscopies in quick succession. A complaint about healthcare in big cities: at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, the earliest appointment for a gastroscopy and colonoscopy was generally two weeks away, and a weekend slot was out of the question. I couldn't hold out, so I went back to my hometown for a gastroscopy, then had another after returning. This was the final diagnosis:
Fortunately, there was no H. pylori. But chronic gastritis with erosions turned out to be much more miserable than I'd imagined.
The doctor prescribed three medicines for two weeks: enteric-coated esomeprazole tablets, teprenone capsules, and dispersible trimebutine maleate tablets.
Those two weeks were wonderful. I barely felt any discomfort, and everything tasted good. Only later did I learn that esomeprazole was suppressing my stomach acid and keeping all the symptoms at bay. Once I stopped taking the medicine, things started going downhill.
There wasn't a particularly severe rebound, actually. It was more that I could constantly feel my stomach, in the upper-left abdomen. It didn't hurt, but it was there. That constant reminder often left me irritable. And the stomach responds to emotions, so...
Time to make some changes!
Here's what I'm trying for now:
- Get up early, at 8:30, and eat breakfast. The company has a decent spread: I usually have a boiled egg, a bowl of congee, and whatever steamed buns are on offer that day.
- Take Kangfuxin liquid, the “cockroach potion,” three times a day to help the gastric erosions heal. It doesn't taste nearly as bad as I expected. Apart from being rather syrupy-sweet, it's actually quite drinkable once you get past the mental hurdle...
- Take B vitamins and vitamin C whenever I remember. I'm pretty relaxed about that one.
- Have yogurt about an hour after lunch. I haven't been able to tell whether this helps, because I bought the wrong yogurt... I got Bright Dairy's yogurt-flavored milk drink instead. A whole case of it 😭.
- Go to bed earlier. I've mostly managed to get to bed before 1 a.m., which probably doesn't count as all that early.
- Quit drinking.
We'll see how it goes. I'm not following a particularly strict diet; hopefully a few months of looking after myself will help my stomach recover.