Man, I feel for everyone in this thread.
A few of you know, I got really sick about 2 years ago. I was standing in my living room and I sneezed and vomited at the same time & it was all downhill from there. It was like a switch was flipped and I couldn't keep anything down. If I was able to not vomit something up, it would come out the other way.
The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. It was like my entire digestive tract was fucked. I had an endoscopy and colonoscopy which they put me under for, but even so, being strapped up with the endocopy ball gag from hell before being put under was pretty traumatic.
They found I had ulcers, but it still didn't explain what was wrong with me. I tested negative for the h.pylori that usually is the cause of them. They tried a bunch of different drugs but I kept getting worse. They found I didn't have the proper gall salts so they thought it was gall bladder. They did some crazy tests and saw that my gall bladder wasn't emptying properly so they decided I must have cancer.
The cancer they told me they thought I had is called cancer of the ampula of vader. It's an extremly rare form of pancreatic cancer and it pretty fatal. Only 40% of patients make it past 5 years after diagnosis. My doctor dropped this on me out of the blue, I was destroyed.
I had more tests done and after thinking I was dying for almost 3 weeks they told me, "oops, not cancer!" so they started looking into other things...
The whole process took 2 years. The benefit was I lost alot of weight but the drawbacks way outweighed the benefits. I couldn't even go to the movies. I'd get situated in the theatre, someone would bring in a hot dog or have BO, and I'd be in the bathroom barfing and dry heaving. It also made working shows fucking hell.
The Cybernet Expo in tampa, spoke on 2 panels, felt pretty good with myself decided to try and eat lunch.. spent almost all of "cooridor cruisin" puking up lunch, then had to pull myself together for the PPT
But anyway, long story short. I went through a bunch of shit doctors before I finally got a good gastro who knew what he was doing. He suspected that the antibiotics I had been put on were the root cause and I had like a massive bacterial infection of my gi tract. So I spent 2 weeks taking 6 antibiotic horse pills a day and then about 2 months taking this probiotic for people with ulcerative colitis called VSL3 twice a day (which is wicked expensive), I was almost back to normal.
I don't really have any major problems anymore and enjoy life again. I can't eat spicy foord, or acidic foods, or raw veggies.. I think I may always be "sensitive", but usually it's just nausea and stomach cramps.
For everyone with UC I would check out
VSL3. I will not lie, it is some pricy shit, but you can't put a price tag on quality of life.