Round and Round We Go

I ended up back at my docs on Friday with lots of bowel pain and problems digesting my food.  He took me off B12 and Celebrex and Protonix and put me on Nexium.  I can now eat but I'm getting stupidly tired and weak again and everything HURTS again.  OMG, either I can feel okay and not eat or feel like crap and be able to tolerate some food. 

So I started looking into stomach issues and CFS and ran into two interesting items:  CFS patients have low stomach acid (as far as I know this is only anecdotal since I haven't found any published papers on it yet) and there is a specific gastric bugs that show up in CFS patients.

Here are the links for further reading:

http://www.fightingfatigue.org/?p=1271
Low Stomach Acid in CFS Patients

http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(97)70075-1/abstract
Stomach Virus

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070913132933.htm
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Linked To Stomach Virus
ScienceDaily (2007-09-17) -- Chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as ME, is linked to a stomach virus, suggests new research. The researchers base their findings on 165 patients with ME, all of whom were subjected to endoscopy because of longstanding gut complaints.

 
This makes me wonder if my infectious disease guy is onto something.  He is worried that something is wrong with my guts.  I'm now looking forward to seeing him on Wednesday.  I am going to bring up the whole low stomach acid thing and see what he has to say.  My stomach problems started with the B12 doses not the start of my pain meds but I was put on them since I was eating a lot of aspirin.  There was definitely a problem with my stomach even before I got chronically ill.  I had to take calcium, magnesium and zinc supplements or suffer leg cramping when I skated.  I also had to eat large servings of protein to keep my energy up.   I had to balance my meals very carefully to keep my blood sugar even and my energy at a constant level. If I had a vegetarian meal I was hungry and tired within a few hours of eating.  I remember being concerned about how much meat I was eating but it was the only thing that stopped me from being hungry and/or tired later.  We are basically working backwards: I have a documented B12 deficiency, now we have to find out why and then find out the cause and hopefully there will be a cure.