Gastritis.

First, an aside. See, I told you espresso has less caffeine than coffee:
http://www.babycenter.com/0_caffeine-during-pregnancy_3955.bc?page=2&articleId=3955

Someone told me you're not supposed to have more than 200 mg a day of caffeine when you're pregnant, and I was curious just how much that was. No, I'm not pregnant, nor to I plan to be any time soon. However, since I'm off caffeine for a while now until my stomach lining can handle it again, I'm curious about caffeine intake in general and learning about when the next time I might have to go through this caffeine withdrawal process again.

Why am I off caffeine: well, for those of you not on facebook, I have been diagnosed with gastritis, which is inflammation of the stomach lining due to the fact that the mucus layer between the stomach lining and the stomach has been compromised. There are several causes: stress, too much acidic food/drink, bacteria, etc. We're not sure of the direct cause yet. Stress always makes everything worse, but I could have been harboring H pylori (which causes ulcers and some gastritis) and that my stress over the summer made me overproduce acid in such a way that H pylori was activated and then the gastritis hit. Who knows?

My endoscopy included a biopsy, so my GI will be able to tell me the cause in about a week. I'm hoping for bacterial, since that would be fairly easy to treat. However, the likelihood of it being stress-related and complicated is extremely high, especially given my summer. In that case, antibiotics won't help. Meanwhile, she prescribed me the big gun Prevacid, which is helping a lot already -- with my appetite in particular. It's not cheap, but it's worth it. I didn't experience any pain on Saturday at all! I am not allowed to eat tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, alcohol, citrus, mint, caffeine, chocolate, green tea, dairy, and a whole bunch of other stuff until it's completely cleared up, which could take a few more weeks or a few more months depending on what the biopsy shows.

The endoscopy itself was just fine. The conscious sedation kicked in nearly immediately, and I woke up at one point during, heard one of the women say "let's give her a little more" and then at one point I saw the inside of my stomach on the screen. Pretty neat! Only for a second, though. I didn't get it in any detail, because I went "out" again immediately after that. The only sense of discomfort I felt was when they woke me up enough to get me to swallow the camera. It was unpleasant but not unmanageable. In the recovery room, they gave me ginger ale, which I drank, and then fell back to sleep again. daN took the whole day off from work so he could take me home and take care of me. As soon as I got home, even though I'd eaten nothing but half a spelt blueberry muffin since 8:45 the night before, I fell back asleep on the couch again. Demerol and Valium make me sleepy!

In the meantime, it's decaf espresso and Celestial Seasonings herbal chicory root and barley tea for me. I'll tell ya, though -- I miss caffeine.