Nausea and Everything That Goes With It

For most of this calendar year, my primary health problem has been related to breathing.  For better or worse, that seems to be changing a bit lately.

Throughout this calendar year, it seemed like my mast cells were not all that active in most of my organs (which had been typical for a couple of decades) but were now active/over-active in my lungs.   In some ways, it seemed like I traded nausea, gastro-intestinal problems, abdominal pain and even kidney and liver pain for the consistent breathing difficulties I had been experiencing this year.  

This change was not necessarily a good change nor a bad change.  It was just something different.  

Healthy people tend to take breathing for granted but, as one might expect, even the slightest breathing difficulties affect everything.  My breathing problems this year have landed me in the hospital and I've had O2 levels in the low 80s far too often (below 95 is a problem).  

All those other problems that I explained above (organ involvement) also affects everything in life too but, for the most part, they weren't immediately life threatening while the significant breathing problems have been life threatening and also resulting in life threatening anaphylaxis too.  As far as "quality of life", either of these options suck.

I was recently telling one of my doctors that I seemed to have traded my hours at a time in the bathroom being sick as a dog for difficulties breathing and constantly gasping for breath.  Really, I can't say that one is worse than the other but it was a change worth noting.

On the positive side, it seems that steroid treatment has been alleviating the worst of the breathing problems so that is good.  I still struggle trying to breathe a few times a week but that is better than constantly struggling to breathe, all day, every day, like I experienced for the first six months or so of this year.  Severity and frequency of the significant breathing difficulties has lessened quite a bit through daily steroid use.

Last night, however, was a significantly lousy night that happened to be spent in the bathroom.  It is funny...  when there is a big swing in symptoms, your brain sort of does some sort of adapting to allow you to forget just how bad things were previously.  I was quickly and almost violently reminded of how bad those other symptoms/reactions are last night though.

I was lying in bed, reading, when I suddenly felt that some sort of gasto-intestinal distress was developing and it seemed to be developing quickly.  I haven't had these problems at their worst in many months so I sort of forgot to grab my bag of medications as I made my way to the bathroom.  Once I made it to the bathroom and was on the toilet, however, I quickly realized that I should have grabbed that bag of medications.  Things deteriorated very quickly and very drastically.

I was hit with stomach pain and nausea almost immediately.  As the nausea worsened, the diarrhea hit...  all this while my stomach was trying to empty its contents upward and against gravity.  Everything seemed to want out any way it could!  My body was trying to evacuate everything in every direction possible.  And, although I didn't think it was possible, the nausea continued to worsen.  

I spent about an hour with moans and groans involuntarily coming out of my mouth...  getting sick and sicker...  more moans and groans...  I'm not even close to being a religious person but I can't tell you how many times I uttered "oh god" between long moans.  

In all, I was in the bathroom, sick as a dog, for close to an hour and a half.  I was finally able to wander from the bathroom to retrieve my bag of medications.  I immediately took some extra H2 Blockers and an anti-nausea medication.  Then I added some extra H1 Blockers.  I was still feeling rather miserable but I felt it was safe to head to bed at this point.  

I did some additional moaning and groaning in bed before finally falling asleep another hour or two later.  

I've definitely had worse experiences with this type of idiopathic reaction but it has been quite a while since I've last experienced these problems so severely.  In the past, this type of myriad of symptoms occurred at least two times a week but this type of reaction really has been far less prevalent this calendar year while significant breathing difficulties were the biggest problem.

Oh, I almost forgot that I even had some minor breathing problems again through the night.  Actually, the past few nights saw some breathing difficulties.  I think that was triggered by using adhesive cleaner a few nights ago but, who knows?  These mast cell activation issues can be triggered by many things and are often idiopathic with no known reason or even due to a combination of unknown reasons.  

What I do know is that last night was miserable and I'm hoping for a better night tonight.