Gastritis/peptic ulcer - help!

With the stress of my dad's death just before Christmas I have now had two bouts of severe gastritis at night. I am on tablets to reduce the amount of acid produced and the doctor has said we'll do a test for H. pylori (possible cause) when things settle down a bit. Anyway, I've been awake half the night with this, am feeling pretty sore, nauseous, and generally crummy, so I'm going to call work to let them know I'm not coming in today. (How lame is that )

My question for anybody who knows: should I be eating today? There seems to be conflicting advice on the web, so I've settled for a breakfast of low fat yoghurt and a glass of warm water (I know how to live it up). I must say, I don't feel very inclined to eat at all, but the tablets say they should be taken before food (or does that just mean on an empty stomach?)

Any advice welcome

You have my sympathies, I know how painful and nauseating it can be
Tabs which say to take before food mean just that - take them just before eating.
I found the only type of food I could keep down when I had it was soups, like watery vegetable soup in particular, even tomato soup was too `rich`, but the veg soup was just enough to help.
As well as meds from the doc I took Rap-Eze which helped a lot too.

Hope you feel better soon :smt001

Thanks Patch To be honest, I think sympathy isexactly what I need right now!

Hope you feel better soon.xx

Hi Duboing Sorry to hear about your Father..
I have had a similar reoccurring problem for many years, it started when my husband was dying and I guess it was due to stress and not eating properly . Over the years I have had every test imaginable including an endoscopy and ultrasound scan but nothing was found.

I had the tablets to reduce the acid production but they didn't seem to help much.
Now when I get an attack I take ordinary paracetamol for the pain and eat small meals of porridge/rice/soup and other bland food for a couple of days. I think eating nothing at all adds to the problem.

I always keep a bottle of Rocks (or Belvoir) Organic Ginger cordial in the house to help with the nausea and take just a small amount of this in warm water.
I hope you feel better soonxx.

Thanks guys, especially for the tips Mini! I must say, I really hope that they find a conclusive bacterial cause from a blood test, because then the treatment is just antibiotics - I go a bit wobbly at the thought of an endoscopy

I'll get some of the cordial, although it might be hard to keep it for long with my husband around, and his voracity for all things ginger!!!

Hope you start to feel better soon, eating bland food little and often is good advice. x

Sorry to hear you're feeling so rough. If you can eat, I'd stick to a piece of fish cooked in foil with some parsley in the oven, sort of steamed with a little mashed potato. Fish is the easiest thing for your system to cope with, definitely not diary, even your yoghurt I don't think??!!

Dave had that Pylori test and it's extremely difficult to do, so make sure you follow the instructions to the letter, and I think you do it for 5 consecutive days! It's quite difficult you have to drink some liquid then do something else??? Then you blow into a tube, oh it's quite difficult so hopefully you won't have to do it anyways!

Maybe you've just got a bug? My sil has had to get the quack out over Christmas as she was being sick all the time and he said there's a nasty virus going around? I hope you get and feel better soon though. Some comforting hugs for you.xxxxxx