Out of the hospital but with many unknowns.

They released me from the hospital today but we return home with questions as to what is causing the problems.  I am consuming liquids and solid foods but I am still having difficulty with meals of any reasonable size.  My diet is going to be limited to smaller meals with a significant portion of each meal being some sort of full liquid diet.

What we do know at this time is this:

• I don't have a mechanical obstruction because when I am on a full liquid diet, I am able to pass food easily and do not have any of the other symptoms that I have been experiencing.
• I don't have a gastric outlet obstruction.  We know this because I had an endoscopy on the day I left the hospital and nothing in my stomach or duodenum appears abnormal WRT obstruction potential.

What we still have on the table as possible diagnoses are:

• Ileus.  Essentially, some part of my digestive tract going sleepy and not allowing things to pass.
• Gastric paralysis. This is where the stomach has similar symptoms as ileus in that it is somewhat sleepy.  The stomach does not properly grind the food that you have put in it and it takes longer than normal to expel that food into the small intestine.

My opinions of these are uncertain.  Unless my ileus is throughout the small intestine, right up to the stomach, I should be experiencing severe cramps whenever I am eating.  This makes me suspect this diagnosis somewhat.

Gastric paralysis seems to have quite a bit going for it.  I experience all the major symptoms of this diagnosis and that makes is a front runner at this point.  There are some medications that have been successful at addressing this disorder so that would be something with potential.  It also always responds well to a full liquid diet which matches what I was doing the first day in the hospital.

Gastric paralysis also can be either confirmed or ruled out with a relatively simple test.  Essentially, I go to the radiologist on an empty stomach.  They have me eat some item such as one or two hard boiled eggs and then take an x-ray every 15 minutes (or some other interval) to evaluate the rate at which that food leaves my stomach.  This is then compared to expected timeframes for stomach evacuation of this amount of food.

Of course, these are only the current potential diagnoses and I hope that we don't have to look any further than these initial guesses and can move me forward!