Once upon a time, a long time ago (1994, to be exact) I had an incipient stomach ulcer.
Stomach ulcers are not nice things, incipient or otherwise, and I had quite a lot of pain at the time. I was trying to self-treat by eating a lot and drinking Coca Cola. I figured if I made myself burp more then the gas (which is all I thought it was) would go away.
It didn't.
Thus I was introduced for the first time to Zantac, and to medical scorn.
1994 was around about the time that helicobacter pylori and its close connection to stomach ulcers was becoming mainstream medicine in the States. I had (and I should probably have seen this as a sign of how unlikely it would be that I would be taken seriously) seen a Horizon programme on it and thought it was a pretty good thing to look for in my case (Horizon ~= Nova, for the Americans in the audience).
The doctor simply thought it was a silly idea. I would paraphrase his remarks as "Oh, those scientists do come up with some quaint notions."
Still, the Zantac helped a lot, to the point where I had forgotten all about stomach ulcers.
Fast forward to January this year. I am tired. I have been tired to the point of exhaustion for the whole month, which is not normal for me, especially when I am getting 8+ hours of sleep every night. And there are fragments of stomach pain, and other distressing symptoms involving the digestive tract which I shall not discuss further.
It's not as if I had never felt like this before. Indeed, in considering what I would say to the doctor yesterday morning I realised that I have had symptoms like this since at least 1998. But they've always gone away before, usually by having a really good sleep over a weekend.
Anyway, the ulcer is back. And this time I didn't get derided for mentioning h. pylori. I got some medication for my stomach, and a whole day later I feel much better. I feel like I actually slept last night.
With any luck I will have some actual energy next week, instead of just bumping along being knackered all the time. Which will probably help with the writing, or with work at least.
Posted by Dunx at February 3, 2005 07:32 AM
Ulcers are finally understood.
www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8088
Read the entire article... It is worth your time.
"...Two Australians have won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for establishing that bacteria cause stomach ulcers, it was announced on Monday."
"...Moreover, they showed that ulcers could be cured altogether by killing the bacteria with antibiotics. Hitherto, ulcers had been considered uncurable. Instead, patients' symptoms were treated with a lifetime of drugs to reduce the acidity of the gut. "