I suffered from chronic lower abdominal pain from childhood, and by 11, I was in pain to varying degrees until I was 70. I saw many GI doctors over the years. At 16, I passed out on the toilet and woke up in the hospital, where I spent 3 weeks bleeding from what was my first diagnosis of chronic bleeding ulcers. By the time I was in college, I was bleeding a couple of times a month. All of this occurred before ulcers were known to be caused by the germ H. pylori. The pain was excruciating, but youth has a way of forging through. I saw a bright young psychiatrist at Stanford who convinced me that life was worth living and that I should use my mind to maintain a social equilibrium of engagement at all costs. By the time I turned 25 and was in grad school, I couldn’t handle the pain, the constant bleeding, and all the meds that came with my issue, such as lots of codeine and stomach-coding OTC drugs. Again fought through the pain. I started substitute teaching, which gave me a lot of control over my day-to-day and time. I joined Kaiser with the help of a school district, and soon saw a GI physician at Kaiser who offered a life-altering surgical solution called a Pyloric Vagotomy at the time, which I immediately agreed to. (similar to the Bariatric surgery today for obesity) .

I weighed 158 lbs at the time, and the surgeon deemed the surgery successful. I was ecstatic for the first time in 25 years! A month or so post-surgery, I began to experience difficulties. The pain was gone…Halluljah! But I was feeling weak and rapidly losing weight. By about the 3rd month, I was experiencing blackout spells and intermittent headaches, which grew into a permanent headache. My Kaiser surgeon and GP assured me I would get better. Frustrated, worried sick, scared, and down to 125lbs and feeling suicidal, I called the GP who saw me multiple times during my bleeding years in college. After he examined me, he became genuinely supportive and, after a few tries, got me into the GI and digestive care department at Stanford Hospital. Stanford was and remains a teaching and research hospital. At the time (1966), they had a program that allowed doctors from different disciplines to see and comment on undiagnosed cases. Mine turned out to be one such case. A doctor involved in pacrease research commented and reported, which I will report in my clumsy lay terms, that my problem stemmed from my pacreases' misreading sugar, fats, and proteins in the small intestine and not producing the enzymes and hormones needed to break them down. Plus the pancreas was producing erratic amounts of insulin needed to properly move sugar (glucose) into my cells. The doctor felt my glucose was swinging rapidly between hypo and hyperglycemia and contributing to my headache and fainting, and the enzymes needed to break down fats and proteins were not doing their job which was causing the weight loss.

The recommended solution was to eat 3 ounces of protein 11 times daily, avoid obvious sugars and to go into the lab once every week for test to determine the level of progress if aay at all.