I have had constant gastro problems for over a year now. I'm pretty young (21) and have never had any kind of problem like the ones I'm about to describe, except for occasional heartburn (but who doesn't?).
I joined the Army last year and was in perfect health and perfect shape. No problems whatsoever. Not long after going to my last post (Redstone Arsenal) I started having stomach pains. My dad had just died and they presumed it was just stress/grief after having an evaluation at behavioral medicine. I was cleared about 2 months later, but I was still having problems. I had an upper endoscopy which revealed slight gastritis in the duodenum but nothing else really. I was then given a HIDA scan and it was determined I had biliary dyskinesia and so my gall bladder was removed. After that, I started experiencing even more pain in my abdomen about 2 weeks after surgery and it was written off as just post surgery pains. It has continued ever since then. Along with chronic pain, I have constant nausea/vomiting and diarrhea. I had even more tests run, just about every test that you can think of related to gastroenterology I've had done. They determined I had gastroparesis and IBS as well, but Crohn's and Celiac's was definitely ruled out. All of these tests were run in about 4 months time after surgery but no real conclusive results were ever given to me.
I have since gotten a permanent medical retirement from the Army (not my choice) and I am gonna be evaluated by the VA relatively soon. I have a current gastro provider now (civilian) and he has tried different meds on me that don't seem to be working and most of the time make things worse. Previously, I had taken Bentyl, Lortab 10, Promethazine, Nexium, and Elavil. All of them sort of controlled the pain and diarrhea, but nothing fixed the nausea. Bentyl flat out stopped working one day and I haven't taken it since. My new provider has tried out Colestid to help with the diarrhea but it only caused more abdominal pain and the results didn't justify its side effects. I have also been on Donnatal and Levsin.. both have belladonna alkoloids that gave me very negative side effects such as blurred vision and constant fatigue. I told my Dr about it and he prescribed Pamine, which is a relatively hard drug to find without getting it ordered. It produced similar side effects except also an increase in abdominal pain and made me extremely dried out and not sweat.. which isn't a good thing in the south. I have stopped taking that but have not talked to my doctor about it yet.
Basically, all of my problems got worse after having my gall bladder removed. I wonder if that caused even more problems? My health has done a complete 180 since joining the Army and I am pretty much hopeless at this point. Any comments/suggestions are extremely appreciated.