Poorlygirl, I'm so sorry for you. I don't have much advice, but I can say through my experiences that I don't have a lot of faith in one doctor's opinion. They seem to get their minds stuck in a little groove and don't think outside the box very much. There are some awesome doctors out there, but every doctor never seems to have a different spin. I have gone the natural route (my gastritis was not as bad as yours) and my doctor told me I shouldn't take the supplements because they were hurting my stomach worse. But she was wrong. They healed me. She also said that there is no such thing as withdrawals from PPIs, which I don't think is true because of all the experiences I have read on these forums. So I know doctors don't know everything and I couldn't take PPIs so I took Zantac and it did help with the healing. That was my second GI, the first one I went to thought I had stomach cancer because of my pain and because I was losing weight. Even though I explained to him that I was losing weight from not eating, he told me that doesn't happen with gastritis. So, I guess what I'm saying is you might need to find another doctor if you can. It seems your doctor doesn't know what to do, so he is now throwing in nerve pain when it doesn't make any sense that foods are causing the pain. That wouldn't be a nerve, I don't think. But, I'm not a doctor and could very well be wrong. I hope you get relief soon.

I agree with you ChattDana, the doctors don,t seem to know. My gastro said it was ok to take herbal supplements and my own doctor said that I should find out from where I buy them if they interact with any medicines. Where you buy them from doesn,t know. Im not eating much either, we are bound to lose weight. How can we eat with this pain? I think its still the gastritis pain as it feels like it is and it affects my eating. Its trying to come off PPIs suddenly that got me into this mess. I got oesophagitis and then gastritis after this. I did not know at the time about PPIs. You cannot withdraw them suddenly.

Well I just spend the entire day at the hospital as I fainted yesterday from stomach pain. First time I have ever fainted so I was pretty scared. All my tests were good and I am healthy but I have too much stomach acid and it has badly damaged my guts and throat hence the pain. It was a reaction to a poor diet I was sent on by the previous hospital. This time I saw an expert and she basically told me that the diet I was supposed to follow and had done so for 3 months were very wrong and probably caused the intense pain in my chest.

Maybe this is the case for you too? I were told to sleep high with my head from now on and as long as I had any pain I wasn't allowed to position my body where my stomach would be over my head (stretching etc.).

For the next month I have to take something called Gaviscon which basically creates foam in my stomach preventing the acid to go up my throat when I sleep. At the same time I have to take a acid neutralizer, NOT a PPI as my stomach cannot handle those and I was told it is the case for many patients.

Stuff like ranitidine and famotidine is definitely better than PPIs. PPIs should always be last-resort prescriptions, because they have bad side-effects.

I've been on ppi's for 20 yrs now. No chance of getting off of them, though I do have it down to 15mg of prevacid at night.
I also have a doc who says food doesn't matter. That is the most ignorant thing I've heard from a doc in a long time and I told him so. Our stomach exist to digest food. How can what we put in there NOT affect it? Perhaps for a normal stomach it would not but we do not have normal stomachs. I think this is hugely about food! Intolerances are major, especially to gluten, milk proteins and artificial sweeteners. The difference in my pain level is directly tied to me avoiding those particular things. Yours may be different but truly there is very, very likely an intolerance you have that you don't know about. As for feeling better in the short run, if you've a heat pack, try sleeping sitting up a bit and placing it on your belly to relax everything in there.

Thanks all. Im still not good but I think it is foods to a certain extent. I am trying to avoid the triggers but I fried some veg in hemp oil and had reflux. The pain won,t let up and it can last a few days. Someone had told me that hemp oil was good for gastritis but not in this case. I ended up in hospital with the gastritis pain last week from the Wednesday to Friday. It eased off then came back when I had the hemp oil and reflux. Im in agony again. All the doctors have prescribed is pain patches and Gaviscon. They did say that I would be referred back to the gastro but he didn,t do anything before. Give me advice on what to eat etc? They think the gastritis should have healed by now but it still feels very inflamed to me. I got it after going on PPIs so I know that they don,t help me.