[Barb G]

I have nausea at times, feel sick all over, hard to describe. I have felt this way for the past year, from a time when I was taking no meds until now so I know it's not medication related. It's not related to any food I eat either. It just comes and goes in waves that last minutes or hours. I feel so sick I can't concentrate and I feel too sick to do much of anything. Hydrocodone (Vicodin) seems to help but nothing else which doesn't make any sense either. Is nausea a normal symptom of lupus or other autoimmune disease?

Barb

 

[lin]

Hi Barb, have you told your doctor all about this feeling??? i only ever feel sick a lot and off food fatigue and feel ill, when im flaring, but you say you have been like this for 12 months,
i would be wanting the gp to be looking into this, please let us know what happens

sorry i cant be of any help Lin xxxxxxxxxxxx

 

[mooks]

hey Barb, sorry you are feeling like this, I get crazy nausea when im flaring, it was actually one of my first symptoms...mention it to your doc so they can rule out anything like h.pylori and ask for some anti nausea pills.. theres no point feeling sick when there are meds out there that work wonders...personally recommend stemetil or ondansetron xxxx

 

[Barb G]

lin, mooks -

Thank you so much for your quick response. If nausea occurs during flares then that is most likely what is going on with me. I think I have been flaring since May 3, 2008 but weird things started happening in January of 2008 so the flare may have started then but it got REALLY BAD on May 3rd. All of my physicians, including my GP and rheumatologist, know about the nausea but because they have been undecided about what's going on, they haven't been interested in addressing it. Now that an autoimmune disease has been confirmed (they still haven't decided which one, meet 8 of 11 criteria for lupus but also meet the criteria for dermatomyositis) maybe they'll address the nausea.

Mooks, ondansetron looks like it would be helpful for me since the vagus nerve has already been implicated in some of my symptoms, it has few side effects and is available as a generic. Thanks for the suggestion.

Barb

 

[doodlebee]

I have had bouts of nausea that started when I started to flare but have never remembered to mention it to the doctors. l just figured it was another lupus thing. Sun exposure also makes me nauseous sometimes (even with sunscreen). Maybe I will ask about it next appointment.

 

[dixy]

hi
Its hard to know what to mention to Drs as I sometimes feel like a hypercondriac (excuse spelling not awake yet.) Is there a list of which ones are important there are so many u just get used to feeling like rubbish. I know how bad excessive fluid can be ,causes right heart failure

 

[Katharine]

I have no idea if nausea and lupus are related but I went through years prior to diagnosis with incredible nausea. I could never eat in a morning and often had to stop my car on the way to work as I would retch without actually being sick. I had no interest in food. It got worse in the evening when tired and when I wanted to go to bed...again I was never sick.

Thankfully it is a symptom that has all but disappeared. It actually went when I had to slow down severely (then stop) at work. At the time I was also having problems with very low blood pressure - maybe the two were linked? Again, the low blood pressure disappeared when I stopped work. Being under medication has also helped all those "little" things.

I did mention it to the doc pre-diagnosis and I think it confused her even more

Sorry, no idea why. I think mine was mainly a symptom of pure exhaustion (lupus exhaustion - I wasn't working more than anyone else, even less actually). I'm the sort of person who can keep going way way beyond where anyone else would have collapsed. I don't collapse but can make myself very ill and then spend months trying to regain some sort of balance.

Katharine

 

[Pink Pearl]

In the early years of lupus, I battled this constantly. Once I was dx with gerd and put on medication, I found that the nausea went away for the most part. I do get the nausea sometimes post mtx, but that is a drug reaction, not disease activity.

If you get relief from the nausea with using tums or some anti acid medication, then I would definitely ask for a gi referral. More and more the "hangers-on" secondary conditions are being accepted and dealt with.
Sally

 

[Barb G]

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences.

I was diagnosed with GERD last May and tried meds for it but they didn't help at all. Then the GERD specific symptoms went away but I still have nausea. In my case, it has to be due to one of two things (or both things) --- it is autoimmune related and/or the enlarged and swollen SCM muscle in my neck is pressing on my vagas nerve causing the waves of nausea. The SCM muscle may be enlarged and swollen due to autoimmune related inflammation; it's currently diagnosed as cervical dystonia (no physician or specialist can figure that problem out despite a year of trying (my $50,000 problem!)

Knowing others experience nausea helps me to make sense of my problem.

Barb

 

[Lily]

Hi Barb,

Long before diagnosis I used to get sudden unexpected waves of nausea and throwing up violently. I had no idea what was causing them they would come on out of nowhere! After I was forced to stop work due to my unresolved health issues it still happened sometimes (not as often admittedly). When I went into the mother of all flares that led to my diagnosis it was around more often too. I figure it had something to do with the Lupus - I've heard others here say they had a similar thing too. Thankfully I don't get that symptom anymore.

love
Lily