I'm pretty sure I had an ulcer a few months ago. It was waking me up at night, and at once point I vomited up some blood. I went on a bunch of acid-reducing medication and swore to never take ibuprofen without proper precautions. The pain was persistent so I had an EGD (scope down the throat) last week. The results were that everything looked perfectly normal. This has happened before, so I wasn't too surprised, but I was pretty annoyed at... my body? my perception of pain?
So I bought a book on IBS and functional dyspepsia (basically having GI pain with no discernible medical reason). The book's advice was to become a "non-patient" and accept some level of pain as normal, and maybe try some other things that studies have shown help (like yoga, cardio workouts, finding trigger foods, etc.). I stopped taking all my stomach medication and decided to just forget about it, and to try not to go to the doctor for every little thing, which is hard, because there have been times were I didn't go to the doctor and it made my health much worse.
I wanted to write about it though, because while it's humiliating, annoying, and frustrating to have unexplained pain, it's also really common! So if you ever need to talk to someone about it, I'll hear you.
