My sister has been in and out of the hospital for two months with severe gastroparesis. The doctors would admit her and get her stabilized, then tell her she had to eat solid food before she could go home. She'd be home for 1-3 days and start vomiting again. She'd go back and the whole dog and pony show would commence all over again. After 2 months of this, we were so frustrated I started researching everything I could find on gastroparesis. I stumbled across a blog written by the wife of a gastroparesis patient. Their story was eerily similar to my sister's. After month upon month of frustration, the wife goes and buys hubby some extra strength Zantac and within three hours he was wanting a cheeseburger. When the doctors came in that afternoon I asked them to give it a try. After a bit of condescending attitude on the doctor's part, he said, well, it can't hurt her so if that's what you want we will give it a try. It has now been a week since she was released from the hospital and so far, so good.
The most frustrating part was that the active ingredient in Zantac (ranitidine) used to be used to treat gastroparesis, but now it's available over the counter, so it isn't as sexy as the high priced drugs they are using now. Besides that, they were keeping her doped up on morphine, diluadid, and phenergan just to stop the vomiting.
If you know someone suffering from this debilitating condition, please mention this to them. My sister has no insurance and has racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bill AND they removed her gall bladder thinking that was the problem. She most likely did not need the surgery at all.