Dieting And Omeprazole: What A Combination!

Ok, I haven't been on Steemit in the last couple days even though I have been off work and haven't really done much around the house. I have been trying to make it a habit to write a post twice a week whether it's the same day or different days. However, I have been a little out of sorts in the last couple weeks and couldn't figure out why.

A little bit of my backstory....I have been on a weight loss journey off and on since I had kids but mostly since high school if I really think back! I alway's felt like if you didn't look like everybody else there must be something wrong with you. This is exactly what magazines and tv want young girls to believe which is ridiculous! I wish I was as fat now as I thought I was in high school:)

So I would take the diet pills and skip meals and drink diet coke by the 12 pack because that's what you do when you know nothing about being actually healthy. You are just looking for ways to be skinny to fit in the newest Aeropostale or whatever brand you preferred. Just bear with me this is leading somewhere, I promise!

I always had heartburn. Most likely it was from drinking all that artificial sweetener on an empty stomach. Just thinking about all of it kind of makes me want to be sick now haha. Instead of trying to figure out the root of the problem my doctor prescribed omeprazole(prilosec). I was probably 13 or 14 at that time. Of course you don't care about possible side effects, you just take the medicine and go about your life. I am 29 now so that's at least 15 years of taking 40 mg every morning.

Fast forward to the last couple months of pain. I woke up one morning to what I thought was stomach cramps but they got so bad I was doubled over in pain. My doctor(not the same one who prescribed the medicine so long ago)told me just to go to the emergency room. They gave me morphine and ran tests. I had an MRI and an ultrasound. Everything was fine so they sent me home and told me to go to my regular doctor the next day.

My doctor looked through everything they did and automatically knew it was Peptic Ulcer Disease. The treatment was to up my dose of omeprazole to twice a day. I would have nausea and headaches daily and just figured it was from allergies because we live in Tennessee and it's that time of the year! I have felt a little out of sorts you could say the past couple weeks. Today was awful, to say the least.

I woke up feeling ok. I let myself sleep in on Sunday's if I don't have to work so I got up a little before 9 am. I just couldn't seem to get motivated to get my regular morning stuff done. Then I knew the kids needed breakfast and I just didn't have it in me to cook. I was trying to talk to my husband about it but it's too hard to explain to people when you get this just unsatisfied feeling. He asked if I felt sad or depressed but I didn't so no. It's almost a feeling of just severe aloneness in your own head. Even though I am a mom and am literally never alone. So I just went on and tossed the laundry in the dryer.

Somehow I got all the way to the river a couple miles from our house and don't remember getting in the car or walking down the path to get to the bottom. I had my phone in my pocket and it rang. It was like being groggy from sleep when I answered the phone and tried to decide how I got there. I walked back up to my car and went home. I hadn't been gone long so they thought I had just drove to the store or something.

I couldn't figure out what was making me feel this way! So I started out by looking up different things that could cause all this mess in my brain. All the stuff could easily be caused by certain medicines. Guess which one was on there? The Omeprazole! I have read the side effects before but figured of course I will be fine. It is supposed to help control the acid in your stomach so instead of having heartburn you just get dementia and osteoporosis!!

I have decided to stop taking it and find a more natural way to help with ulcers because I think the omeprazole is affecting me in a negative way. If you have any advice that would be helpful( lose weight is not a helpful suggestion because I already am in the beginning of a lifestyle change over my body) that would be great! Or if you read my whole super long post and just want to tell me I should have stopped taking it long ago, let me know in the comments;)

Thank you for reading! I know it isn't my usual recipe post but it kind of explains what is going on with my posts lately.
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Photo by @curly-q