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A young woman who suddenly started vomiting every time she ate anything had to endure a two-year battle for a diagnosis after her symptoms were mistakenly put down to stress.
Dani Elizabeth, from Ashford, was eventually found to have gastroparesis – a partial paralysis of the stomach, which means it cannot empty itself in the normal way.
Her problems started when she was 18, after going out for a meal with friends.
“I came home and in the middle of the night I started throwing up loads of mucus,” she said.
“I thought it was just food poisoning at the time, but it persisted from then on.
"Every time I ate I had nausea and stomach pain. It felt like the food was building up until I eventually threw up.”
When she went to see her doctor, the Singleton resident was told her symptoms could be down to stress.
“At first they told me to come back if the symptoms carried on,” she said.
“When I did, they did a series of tests including an ultrasound and an endoscopy, which all came up with no issues.
“They then asked me if I was sure that it wasn’t just because I wanted to lose weight.
“They saw that I had weight loss and was being sick, and their response was that it was all in my head."
But Dani, who is now 22, was not convinced by what she had been told and fought for a true diagnosis, eventually receiving one after a number of private appointments.
"I knew what I felt was not normal."
A consultant diagnosed her with gastroparesis, a chronic condition that includes damaged nerves around the stomach, resulting in the body taking as much as four times longer than normal to digest food.
The Singleton resident is now learning to live with the condition, which affects 10 men and 40 women out of 100,000, and wants to raise awareness for others who may be suffering.
While there are medicines that can be used to alleviate the symptoms, some come with serious side effects, while a gastric pacemaker operation is unavailable on the NHS and costs £30,000.
To live with the disease, for which there is no cure, Dani says she now has to regulate the amount she eats and the frequency of her meals, so that she does not feel nauseous.
“I knew what I felt was not normal, and the consultant was amazing. When the diagnosis came back I felt vindicated,” she said.
“I really had to fight to advocate for myself to get the diagnosis and I’m very aware that there could be so many people out there who might not do that, or might not even know about gastroparesis.
“When tests are coming back negative and saying there’s nothing wrong, you start to question whether the symptoms are even real.
“But it is definitely real, and I’m just hoping that getting my story out could help someone in the same position.”
To read more about gastroparesis and its symptoms, click here.
