gastroparesis. Lets break this down. Gastro means tummy or gastrointestinal. Paresis means paralyzed or stopped.

The sx are that food takes forever (even water) to pass thru your tummy and even the smallest of meals makes you full very quickly. I have to be sure that I have no food for 6 hours before I lay down or I will end up vomiting in the middle of the night. My right stomach feels like someone grabbed my intestine and flipped it over. I have had MRIs, CTscans, gastric emptying tests, Colonoscopies, Endoscopies, ...it could go on and on. For a while they wanted to blame the fact that I take narcotics, but we quickly led to many episodes that happened before I ever knew about narcotics.

They are telling me that MS can affect the intestine in some rare patients (if its rare, im on the list) and that during flares the stomach can simply either forget what to do or the brain doesnt send the proper signal on what to do with the food you recieve. Last year when this happened I spent about a month in the hospital after 3 days of IVSM wrecked me.

It can get dramatically bad, and then clear up and you would never know anything is wrong. Most folks with Gastroparesis have it all the time without relief. MS patients with it, get it during and around flares. I guess there are several published papers on it now. It used to be MS folks would complain about their tummies and the MD would say "cant be, must be something else" now some smart MDs are listening to their patients and recording it for the other MDs to follow.

You get many answers from many MDs. One says MS. the other says NO WAY! and the next guy says "maybe you dont have MS, maybe you have (insert even more rare disease) and then you spend two weeks waiting for results. Its been a rollar coaster ride. This guy I saw is head of the department for a major medical center and specializes in Gastroparesis.

I hate this disease!