It’s not very comforting to hear your doctor say that medicine isn’t a perfect science and sometimes a prescription that is good for one ailment can cause another. At least he’s honest rather than arrogant. But that is the situation I found myself in this past week when I visited my doctor’s office for severe intermittent stomach pains. Thanks to WebMD, I knew my diagnosis and treatment before the words came out of his mouth and I had already taken steps to mitigate the problem.
Of course, the doctor berated me for my proactive behavior. After all, I hadn’t gone to medical school. However, in my defense, I was in real pain and the earliest appointment I could get was three weeks out. I can read and I have the internet, so I did some research and diagnosed my problem as a stomach ulcer and took the proscribed steps to begin the healing process. By the time I made it to the doctor’s appointment, 80% of the intermittent pain was gone and I’d even considered cancelling the appointment. Thankfully, my husband vehemently objected to that idea and so did the doctor.
The doctor confirmed my own diagnosis as being peptic ulcer disease. He officially took me off of my daily baby aspirin, something I had stopped taking two weeks before. My bad kidneys already demanded that I leave other NSAIDs like Ibuprofen alone. I changed my eating habits, giving up spicy foods, eating much smaller meals, and adding oatmeal in my morning shake along with my plain Greek yogurt and berries. Since I don’t smoke or drink, I was halfway there.
The doctor’s appointment wasn’t totally a waste, though. I learned that stress doesn’t cause ulcers. Stress can exacerbate the problem. I also learned that apparently 80-90% are caused by an infection of H. pylori bacteria. I was given a breath test to determine if I need antibiotics. True to form, the doctor ordered a battery of other tests to rule out a host of other potential problems for which I had no symptoms and which he admitted were highly unlikely. I wanted to object, but having already been berated for my lack of an MD, I compiled with tests that will likely contribute to the skyrocketing cost of medical insurance. That was time and money down the drain, but I wasn’t bold nor confident enough to refuse.
The unsettling part of it all was that the baby aspirin I was taking for years is no longer recommended for most women because it causes bleeding and will worsen my ulcer if it wasn’t the actual cause. However, I am a female exception to this newest medical finding because of my strong family history of stroke and having had a mini-stroke several years back. For women like me, aspirin is recommended. But for women like me with a peptic ulcer, aspirin is a big problem. My doctor was at least humble enough to admit that he didn’t know what to do. The best he could do for now was see if I needed antibiotics, recommend Pepcid, keep me on the lookout for blood in my stool, and rule out other problems.
I’ve decided to do more. I left the doctor’s office with a renewed commitment to get more serious about losing weight, eating healthier, getting enough sleep, restarting a lunch walk to my exercise regime, moving more through gardening and housekeeping (not shopping), and keeping my stress levels down. My most important goal for 2020 is to develop a healthier lifestyle. Pain from a sore in my stomach was the best motivation I needed to do better.