Hi Everyone,

I'm a 40 year old female who was diagnosed with chronic erosive gastritis exactly a year ago. I had been having symptoms on-and-off for nearly 10 years, namely upper right quadrant pain. Last year after series of crises my symptoms became severe including pain in the upper abdomen under the rib cage, upper right pain, a 'burning hole' pain in the package, extreme hunger in between meals, nausea, trouble swallowing, and esophageal pain. I had two ultrasounds, an endoscopy with biopsies, a hida scan, gastric emptying study, MRA, and a lot of bloodwork (including tests for h pylori and celiac disease). The diagnosis was chronic erosive gastritis and duodenitis. All other tests were normal. The biopsies showed nothing. I was prescribed omeprazole 40 per day and sucralfate 1 gram twice per day for eight weeks. Neither medication seemed to help. I finally started to improve just a little after three months and I stopped taking omeprazole after six months. Since then I've been taking Zantac as needed and sometimes sucralfate. Sometimes I'll have one or two days without symptoms but most of the time I have symptoms throughout each day.

I saw four gastroenterologists over the past year but none had much to suggest aside from taking Zantac when I have symptoms. When I didn't improve two of the doctors changed the diagnosis to functional dyspepsia and prescriped amitryptaline (an anti-depressant used to treat nerve pain) but I chose not to take it.

I guess what I'm wondering from everyone here is whether anyone has erosive gastritis? Has anyone doubted their diagnosis? Sometimes I wonder if I have GERD, a hiatal hernia, bile reflux, or some obscure illness like mast cell disease, each of which would entail a different set of medications or surgery. It feels kind of hopeless because no one really seems to have any insights. Perhaps I have GERD and gastritis but I never had GERD symptoms before until last year when the gastritis symptoms because severe.

Following the diagnosis I was afraid to eat almost everything and I rapidly lost a lot of weight to the point of danger. I've since gained back the weight but the symptoms continue. It's frustrating because my diet was already pretty healthy. I stopped all gluten and dairy for a few months but that didn't seem to make a difference. I've been vegetarian for 25 years. I cut-out acidic and spicy foods but that doesn't help as well. I already eat very little sugar. When I started to eat some of the above-mentioned foods again after losing too much weight it really didn't make much difference. Lately I've been eating pretty much everything and there are some recipes and foods that do seem to make symptoms a bit worse, such as tomato-based products, but sometimes they don't cause symptoms. I've tried ginger tea, slippery elm, dgl licorice, FDguard for functional dyspepsia, and sometimes antiacids but with few results. Zantac helps more than omeprazole and sucralfate more recently seems to help with the abdominal pain but not the reflux symptoms.

I've been under a lot of stress this past year so perhaps that's the culprit?

It'd be great to hear if anyone here has any suggestions on what to possibly do next. I'll also be sure to share anything I've learned on others' threads. Thanks in advance!