Today, the 1st of August, kicks off Gastroparesis Awareness Month!
What is Gastroparesis, and why is it important that we have a month dedicated to its awareness and advocacy?
Gastroparesis (GP) is a condition that basically means “paralysed stomach”. People who have it have stomachs that don’t work properly. Instead of being able to squeeze, digest, and move food on, their stomachs aren’t functioning well so food just sits there. That causes a host of symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, bloating, GERD, feeling full very quickly, etc.
Those symptoms can lead to malnutrition and dehydration, so GP patients can end up in hospital needing fluids, or on feeding tubes, or TPN.
Sadly, some patients with severe GP do die from it.
We need to care about this disorder because there are people, myself included, who suffer every day.
There are limited treatments.
Medications and Botox often fail and/or stop working. Electrical stimulation helps some, but not all. Feeding tubes fail.
Imagine you got a stomach virus. You felt nauseated and kept being sick when you tried eating and drinking. Your stomach hurt and you were fatigued.
Now imagine that just never ended and that was just your life now.
That’s us with GP. That is our life.
We have no cure… We have limited treatments… But we do have hope.
So this August, please spread the message and consider donating to a GP charity so that we can have even more hope.
Reblogged this on My Medical Musings and commented:
My beautiful friend Erin, blogger at A Chronic Spoonful, suffers from a horrible disease called Gastroparesis. August is Gastroparesis Awareness month & Erin has very clearly explained exactly what this disease is that she & many others relentlessly suffer from.
I’ll leave you to read Erin’s post.
Sam xx
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Well done for raising awareness of this condition Erin. Even BIGGER well done for managing to live with this condition in the first place, let alone remain such an inspiring, warm and caring person x x x x Esther
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Aww! Thank you! That means a lot to me. Much love to you. 💗💗💗
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Thank you for writing about Gastroparesis Awareness Month! I also wrote about it on my blog, which is http://www.idealisticjourney.com. I also have to deal with gastroparesis, I’ve had this since I was just sixteen. I followed your blog. Hugs and wishing you the best.
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