Bleeding Ulcers

[Allen]

This is to inform others so bare with me. It could happen to you.

Monday afternoon I experienced some mild stomach pain exactly like you would expect from eating an un-ripe piece of fruit as I did with a banana. The mild pain lasted 3-4 hours and went away. I thought nothing of it. Also, Monday day I had a normal and regular bowel movement (I'm getting there). Monday night I had to go again. This time my bowels were "loose", still a common occurrence. I found afterward that the toilet bowel was filled with blood, mostly dark clotted blood which would indicate blood from the stomach and not anywhere downstream of the stomach. These identical BM's kept occurring throughout the late night and early Tues morning. By the time I went for my 4th visit I had become dizzy, nauseated, and was burning up with a hot sweat (not chills) due to the loss of blood. I had several occurrences after this too.

After this happened several times I estimated my blood loss at around 2 quarts. While this sounds far fetched my reading up on it somewhat confirmed it. I tried to look up how fast your body could make new blood but as you have blood leaking into your stomach it more than likely can't keep up. Going to the bathroom is only a measure of how much you're losing, not the rate it's pouring into your stomach. Frequency matters too. I had so much coming "in" that I never felt hungry since I was always full of blood. I read where the stomach tear can be like 1/4" to 2" so there can be a lot of variance.

Per articles read: An average human body weighting 180# contains 10.5 pints blood (1 1/2 gallons). I weight a little more than this so my blood level would be slightly higher. When you lose around 30% of your blood you start to become dizzy and nauseated (no mention of the fever/chills). If you make it to a 40% loss you will no doubt pass out and your organs will start to shut down. At that point blood would need to be given to you with no guarantee's of complete recovery. Beyond that you become worm food.

I write this to say beware, it could happen to you or anyone and I'm NOT out of the woods myself but the bathroom visits have reduced way down. I still can't walk far due to being dizzy when I stand. This happened to one of my sister-in-laws too. I am taking Prilosec OTC and Tums to reduce my stomach acid so healing can begin and it is working (?).

Bottom line:
You can get an ulcer w/o any warning.
You can lose a lot of blood fast and w/o a lot of discomfort till things get really bad.
You probably won't know you have an ulcer till you use the bathroom and one may not be available. Once this happens you will have to become a toilet hugger if there is a lot of flow.
With a large opening there's nothing you can do about how much blood you're losing and a visit to the ER would require stiches if you were to make it on time.

A lot of people get these on a less severe level. I've never had one before that I know of but in my case "when it rains it pours".