Ibuprofen Warning: My peptic ulcer nightmare

So to start this story we're gonna have to go back to the beginning...when I was a little girl. I was a playful adventurous child always outdoors. 

And I loved to climb things when I was little, especially the "monkey bars" at the playground. But I also loved to climb trees or anything I could climb on, even the swing sets; I'd climb those too. 

But indoors I'd climb door jambs and then swing from the top. I loved to climb so much so that an uncle of mine used to call me "monkey" when I was real little. And I was about four to 5 years old when I fell from a door jamb while my older brother was babysitting me. 

My mother took me to the ER but I guess they didn't really look into my neck. I'm not sure but all I know is throughout my childhood I suffered with severe migraines that weren't partially resolved till I was 11/12 years of age when my mother took me to a chiropractor who found that I had vertebrae out of alignment in my neck from the fall I took when I was 4/5 years old. 

During the years that I suffered with migraines they'd usually come on with excitement, like the 4th of July or something like that. I remember I lost an entire 4th of July from a migraine. But back then you could only take Tylenol as a child. You couldn't have ibuprofen till you were 12. There was no such thing as children's ibuprofen back then, just Tylenol and Tylenol didn't help my headaches. 

In the beginning my mother took me to the hospital a couple times cause they were so bad. I'd end up passing out from the pain. If you've ever had one you know the drill - light and noise make the pain worse and you need a dark quiet room till it passes. After the chiropractor realigned my neck the headaches subsided for the most part. 

Every now and then I'd get a wicked one but when you go through that you learn to manage them. And one of the things I learned from a young age is to take something at the first sign of pain otherwise the medicine wouldn't help. Once I was old enough for ibuprofen that's what I used and that's the only thing that helped my migraines. 

But like I said I didn't get them as often as when I was a child, so it was okay. Later in life when I was 28 I had a car accident where I was rear-ended. The person hit me full force at about 45/50 and the entire backend of my minivan was caved in and a total loss. Lucky for me all I ended up with was a bulging disc in my C spine and my children weren't in the car at the time. It was just me. 

But unlucky for me this has caused me to suffer with daily headaches ever since. There was no settlement. I did not sue. I had to fight to have medical bills paid. Tried physical therapy, didn't help. The only thing that helped was heat and ibuprofen...so I began to take it daily to keep the headaches at bay not realizing I was destroying my stomach in the process. 

Anything to stop the pain and keep the headaches at bay, cause they began to take on a new life of their own, more debilitating than ever if it gets bad. Yes, I still have them and I'm seeing a neurologist next month. I refuse to take pain pills. That's not me, so I prefer over the counter stuff. 

So back to the title, why the warning? Well within the past 1-2 years I began to suffer with a burning pain in my abdomen. I was afraid I had cancer or something, which I'm still not 100% out of the woods with that scare yet. This whole year has been a nightmare with that scare. I'll explain... 

So to address the burning pain in my abdomen that was so bad that I could only sleep on my back I began to see different specialists to get to the bottom of this pain that radiated into my back. So I started with a GYN, then Ortho (cause I also have slight scoliosis) and Gastroenterologist. GYN and Ortho were first. 

I was due for my exam anyway and I should also add this was all pushed back cause of COVID too, so I suffered in pain and had to wait till it was safe to be seen. Thank God nothing happened while I waited because by the time it was caught I was severely anemic which even on iron I'm still anemic but we'll get to that too... 

So all clear with GYN and ortho! GYN sent me for some tests after my exam, ultrasounds were all clear. Then ortho did x-ray of my back and found that my scoliosis is the same as it was ten years ago but I do have the beginnings of degeneration at my tailbone probably because I have a desk job. Ugh. So anyhow, then comes gastro. 

First they did colonoscopy. Found some things, did biopsies, biopsies were clear. At this point it was found that I was severely anemic though. Started me on extra iron. Then waited for my endoscopy. Wake up from endoscopy to find out that I had a medium sized hiatal hernia (we've determined likely from my twin pregnancy), GERD that I didn't know I had so bad that I had scar tissue in my esophagus (from the hernia), AND she stressed to me that I had "really, really bad peptic ulcers." 

And she started me on something right away for the peptic ulcers. This type of ulcer, peptic ulcers are caused by one of two things: ibuprofen or H-pylori bacteria. She did a bunch of biopsies again and tested for h-pylori. Everything was clear thankfully but not out of the woods. Gotta heal the ulcers. Stress makes ulcers worse and my life is full of stress. 

So trying to reduce stress, which again is not the cause but can make this type of ulcer worse, and ironically at this point I had given up ibuprofen last spring of 2020 because I was afraid of having a stroke now that I'm in my 40s. My big brother who passed away in 2014 of pneumonia and sepsis had a stroke a few years before his passing and I didn't want to increase my risk. I know that ibuprofen can increase your risk of those things so I had already given it up by the time we found the ulcers. 

So that was good but the damage was done. I had to go back after four months to see how they were healing. During that time I had a headache that was so painful I was forced to take ibuprofen but only twice. And that was after suffering for three or four days and nothing was helping. When I woke up from the endoscopy in February the first thing my GI asked me was, did you take ibuprofen? 

I said only once and I felt so bad but explained. And she understood. She said my hernia is small now, not medium, so that's good, but that my stomach is worse. I've been under a lot of stress since my last endoscopy so I think that worsened it, but she said even once with the ibuprofen can also worsen it. She told me to take Excedrin Tension for my headaches. 

I have yet to pick it up but will soon cause last week I had a wicked headache again from stress. I take Tylenol but it does absolutely nada for my headaches and that's been my experience my entire life but I refuse to take pain pills so I suffer. Anyhow, I go back for the follow up on the biopsies from this endoscopy this week. 

I might have to reschedule though. We'll see. So after the second endoscopy she has me taking the ulcer medicine twice a day now and then something to coat my stomach at bedtime. Sometimes it feels like it's improving. Sometimes it doesn't. I saw a hematologist in January. The GI referred me to him because my anemia didn't resolve with the daily iron. 

I'm supposed to go back to him but had to cancel and haven't had time to reschedule. I guess my type of anemia could be linked to cancer but they're not finding cancer. Overdue for mammogram, which I was supposed to have in August and have been rescheduling ever since. I don't know. I have deep circles under my eyes that started a couple years ago but could be from the anemia they say. Who knows? 

COVID messed up many of my appointments and pushed things back so here we are...still trying to piece it all together. My mammo is Tuesday of this week. I might get my butt in there finally and not reschedule. Hopefully the anemia is just from my ulcers that again, sometimes feel like they're healing and other times when under stress feel like they're not healing. 

Just talking about them is making them hurt, ugh. The moral to the story - it all started from ibuprofen, something you get over the counter for a headache. Unbelievable... So take care of yourself. If you have pain, don't wait. Don't put it off. I'm that mom that always puts myself last and puts everyone and everything else first but we have to take care of ourselves too, because if we don't then we won't be around for our kids. 

Ironically it was my new year's resolution in 2020 to take better care of my health. I was so excited because I got better insurance for the first time in my life fall of 2019 and I was gonna finally make time to do this. And then COVID happened and appointments got pushed out. But we're getting there. Take care of yourself and avoid excessive use of ibuprofen. If you have severe headaches talk to your doctor to find something that won't destroy your stomach. Be well.

With Love,

Carmen