My drink was spiked 8 years ago and for the next week I was constantly sick. I didn’t think that much about it – I was quite young at the time and I put it down to just a bad experience. Then about 6 months later just all of a sudden I got these vomiting attacks. I’d constantly be sick for 3 or 4 days and have to go to hospital. These attacks got a lot more frequent and it got to the point where it was every other month for about 2 years.
I went through the NHS for 5 years with this, admitted to hospital at least 30 times. Every time I got the same thing. They just didn’t know what it was, even when I saw a stomach specialist.
They tested me for everything – they’d never seen anything like it before. All they could do was to try to stop the vomiting and the pain that went with it. It was getting worse as time went on. The only speculative diagnosis I was ever given was that it might be a stomach migraine.
The only thing that reduced it was morphine. It would give me the chance to rest and get some sleep, but a couple of days later it would start again as soon as the morphine wore off.
It was affecting my entire life because I was having a week, sometimes two weeks, off work with every attack. I missed out on various promotions because of it.
It affected me socially because the attacks happened around big social events. I went to America to see family and spent a week in hospital; I missed my best friend’s 30th birthday and countless christenings and weddings.
It basically put my life on hold for a good 5 years, just constantly worrying about when it was next going to happen. It was like a waiting game, absolutely horrible.
It was also triggered by stress. The month before I saw you I’d been in the process of buying a house with my partner, and with all the stress I had the worst attack I’d ever had and it lasted a full week, constantly being sick.
At this point I thought I’ve just got to try something different and that’s when I rang your clinic. That first session with you was the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced.
I was standing there listening to everything you said and it felt like the feeling had been removed from my stomach completely. It was absolutely amazing after 8 years of hell to have this feeling go within an hour or so.
When I saw you I’d been on a diet for two years that was recommended by a microbiologist. But as soon as I left that first session with you I immediately knew that I could eat whatever I wanted without having to worry about getting ill again.
Thanks for all your help – it’s totally priceless!
