Last year, due to a bad bout of vomiting, loss of appetite, weight loss, and extreme nausea, I was diagnosed with gastoparisis.

Gastroparesis is a condition in which the muscles in your stomach dont function normally.

"Ordinarily, strong muscular contractions propel food through your digestive tract. But in gastroparesis, the muscles in the wall of your stomach work poorly or not at all. This prevents your stomach from emptying properly. Gastroparesis can interfere with digestion, cause nausea and vomiting, and cause problems with blood sugar levels and nutrition."

So basically, the stomach muscles are not working properly.

Well, I started thinking with this whole throat spasm thing I have going on and I noticed as it worsened, my gastoparisis has returned with a vengeance. So I started thinking. If my MS makes my legs, arm, and throat muscles spasm and not loosen up, why can it not do the same to my stomach muscles.

The thing is, my GI does not know what causes my gastoparisis and is trying to treat it with a dangerous drug. But, if this is from my MS, should I not then be treating it like I would my other spasms?

So, I did some research and lo and behold there is a gastoparisis/MS connection.

It is all making sense now.

So, if you have trouble with your stomach not emptying and you have MS, there might be a connection.

I wanted to put this out there to anyone with MS who suffers from feeling full after a few bites, vomiting, weight loss, no appetite, and nausea. I realize this may not be the source of your problem, but it worth checking out so you can be better equipped to fight it.

It can be checked out by doing a simple stomach emptying test. It is fairly painless. Nothing nasty to drink, just some eggs laced with radioactive material. Which is how I like to start my day, with a nice dose of radioactive material.

"For a gastric emptying study, a patient eats a meal in which a solid component of the meal (for example, scrambled egg), a liquid component of the meal (for example, water), or both, are mixed with a small amount of radioactive material. A scanner (acting like a Geiger counter) is placed over the patients stomach to monitor the amount of radioactivity in the stomach for several hours after the test meal is eaten. As the radioactively-labelled food empties from the stomach, the amount of radioactivity in the stomach decreases. The rate at which the radioactivity leaves the stomach reflects the rate at which food is emptying from the stomach."

I am now questioning if I should take this drug I really dont want to take because of the horrible, irreversible side effects. I think I need to have a discussion with my GI and Neuro to sort this all out.

Now to find a way to get my muscles all in order. I can massage my legs and arms, but I am finding my esophagus and stomach a little harder to reach.