Your health: Sick 60 times a day
Shimmi Munshi, 42, from Bolton, lives with an incurable illness
I’d only just finished my lunch, when I felt it coming straight back up. Not again, I thought as I ran to the toilet. It was summer 2009, and for the last few days I’d been unable to keep anything down.
As soon as I finished a meal, I’d throw it up almost at once.
The doctor thought it was a stomach infection, gave me antibiotics. But, after a month, I was still vomiting, sometimes up to 40 times a day!
So the doctor referred me to a consultant at Bolton Hospital.
‘You have a severe form of gastroparesis,’ he explained.
A long-term, incurable condition, gastroparesis occurs when the stomach can’t empty itself normally. So up it came.
I was given medication, but my health only deteriorated.
For over a year, I was bed-ridden, vomiting up to 60 times a day.
I’d hit rock bottom.
On leave from my job as an advisor at an energy company, my mum Noorie, 55, and dad Siraj, 65, stepped in to care for me and my
son Ameen, then aged 10.
My weight had dropped to just 6½ stone, and I felt mentally broken.
Until one day…
This isn’t you, I told myself. I couldn’t go on like this and knew I had to snap out of it – if not for my sake then for Ameen.
So I did some research into gastroparesis and discovered a doctor in Liverpool who was fitting gastric pacemakers.
They work by sending an electrical current through the stomach to induce contractions and help it to function properly again. ‘This is what
I need!’ I told Mum.
My GP referred me to the hospital, and I had an op to have my gastric pacemaker fitted in May 2010.
The procedure was a success, and I could finally eat normally again!
But, after nine months, the vomiting returned, this time with harsh stomach pains.
I was also struggling to wee, so I was referred to a urologist. ‘Your bladder is deteriorating,’ I was told. As the bladder and bowel are connected to the stomach, my condition was stopping my bladder contracting. ‘If this had gone unnoticed you could’ve suffered kidney failure,’ the urologist said. So I had two neurostimulators fitted in my buttocks, one in
each cheek, to help control my bladder.
I’m also taking medication to assist my bowel.
But I won’t let gastroparesis defeat me.
Instead, I try to live as normal a life as possible.
I’m now a manager at my job, and take supplements to make sure
I retain the nutrients I need.
With the support of my parents and Ameen, now 21, there’s nothing I can’t stomach.
as soon as I finished a meal, I’d throw it up almost at once