My dear mom suffered GI symptoms. She had every test. Every procedure. Had her gall bladder removed. etc., etc. Mom wasn't an educated woman. She confided in me
that the doctors had tried to explain that her illness was due to depression and anxiety. They prescribed an anti depressant and an anti anxiety medication. She told me that the doctors didn't understand, because
they were telling her it was all in her head, but she knew she wasn't crazy as her symptoms were physical. Sadly, my mom passed after going to the ER on a Sunday night, complaining of stomach pain.
Due to her history, I presume, of unfounded stomach complaints, they simply admitted her to a room where she passed from a ruptured stomach aorta.
Sunday night is a bad time to be admitted to a hospital, FYI. Well, I was still in the process of researching possible causes of my own complicated health issues when I came across
a medical journal describing the process of diagnosing IBS. It could have been my mother's case history. The diagnosis is given by exclusion. When it isn't anything else, and after
they have taken out the gall bladder, you get the IBS diagnosis. Or, at least that is how it used to be. I think this was the first time I really began to appreciate the mind body connection and how much our
digestive processes are affected by anxiety and depression. Well, I wish I had come across that journal earlier, so that I could have sat with my mother and helped
her come to an understanding of how her illness worked, and no...she wasn't crazy. . Interestingly enough, I would solve the mystery of how my own mental illness began, because it also began in my stomach.
I experienced something called an epigastric aura. I believe it is known by abdominal aura in the US. It is a seizure that begins at the bottom of the Vagus nerve in the abdomen.
It rises slowly up that nerve, through chest and neck into the brain, where it initiates a larger temporal lobe seizure. This epileptic event caused a period of psychosis which segued into an affective disorder of
recurrent major depression. It is a rare and difficult to diagnose illness, and it only took me 40 years to do it.
