For as long as I can remember, I always had a huge appetite with an incredibly fast metabolism which allowed me to eat whatever, whenever, and not gain a pound. You wouldn't see me go more than two hours without eating if I could help it. In high school, I would keep snacks in my backpack because the long wait from the morning bell to lunch period was too long for me to go without snacking. One of my old friends even invited me over to her house after her sister's graduation party to help them eat the leftovers. This was usually a topic of conversation, and I was referred to "a fat kid trapped in a skinny person's body." People would tell me how lucky I was, or ask me where I put it all and if I had a hollow leg or something to store all the food I was eating. This was normal for me, until the summer of 2014 when my entire life changed.
I started to feel sick all the time. I had unexplained stomach pains, nausea, and I would feel extremely full after only eating a small amount of food. I felt fatigued and had no motivation to do anything, it was discouraging and I had no idea what was wrong with me. I was afraid to go out to eat because I was worried about getting sick or feeling sick at the restaurant, I didn't know if a specific food was causing it, I even considered food poisoning, but I was confused because I never actually physically got sick, I always just felt awful. This went on for months, and slowly started to get worse.
In the fall of 2014, my sophomore year of college, I started to lose weight uncontrollably, and fast. Pairs of jeans I had for three years were baggy. My thighs no longer touched, my cheeks and eyes were sunken in and I looked like a skeleton. It got this bad so fast because I was already naturally thin, so I didn't have much to lose without it affecting my health. I went from my stable size of 5'4 and 107 lbs to a mere 89 lbs.
After months of waiting, I was finally able to see a gastroenterologist for testing. From September to November I had multiple tests; an ultrasound of my stomach, a hydrogen breath test, a stomach emptying test, and an endoscopy, where I had to be put under anesthesia and have a tube with a camera on it put down my throat and into my stomach and intestines.
After all of this testing, in November of 2014, they finally diagnosed me with a condition called SIBO, which stands for Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth. Basically, the normal bacteria that everybody has in their large intestine made its way into my small intestine and wasn't letting my body absorb the nutrients from the food I was eating, causing my significant weight loss. I had never heard of this before, and most people I talk to still don't, even doctors I've seen. The worst part about it is that SIBO is a chronic condition, they don't know what causes it, or how to prevent it, and takes a lot of work to manage. My doctor handed me a stack of paperwork, a prescription for medication which cost $1,100 and sent me on my way.
I felt hopeless and lost. The doctors did their job of diagnosing me but left me on my own to treat it. I took the prescribed medication and did my best to follow the special "Low FODMAP" diet. I felt better for maybe about a week, but I was still severely under weight, trying to manage this SIBO and new diet without much knowledge of my newly diagnosed condition at all.
In January of 2015, I decided to see a nutritionist to help me with my new diet and gaining my weight back to hopefully find some relief. After keeping track of my meals, tracking my calorie intake, and limiting lactose, gluten, fructose, and polyols from my diet, all of which could cause my SIBO symptoms to worsen, I started to improve and gain some confidence back. It was a long and challenging process, but my nutritionist and I narrowed down my food intolerances, found ways for me to manage my symptoms, and got my weight almost all the way back to where I was before I started to get sick.
Even after being diagnosed, taking medication, and seeing a nutritionist, my life still will never be the same as it was. When I go grocery shopping or go out to eat, I have to read the label on every single thing to make sure there aren't any ingredients in it that I am intolerant to and may cause me to get sick. It has caused me to have anxiety about day to day things that never used to matter before.
It's January of 2016 and I still struggle with my SIBO every day, keeping my weight up, and trying to live my life normally.
Being someone who could always eat whatever I wanted to whenever I wanted to, I still received comments like "you're so skinny" or "put some meat on those bones," and I could reply with "you should see me eat" and it never really bothered me. But now, getting those comments bothers me a little more because I'm doing everything I can to maintain my weight while having to watch what I eat so I don't get sick while being overly conscious of the way that I look like I never was before.
My life has changed completely in the past year and a half, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I went from being completely healthy, confident, and care free, to someone who can't go more than one day without feeling sick, constantly worrying that I still look sick and too thin, and hoping I don't have to go back for more testing. I even lost some "friends" along the way, because they didn't understand why I didn't want to go out and party all the time and thought I was just making this up for attention. But even while having the weight of all of this on my shoulders, I still try to live my life as normally as possible.
After the research I've done I found out that SIBO is actually pretty common, it's just so rarely talked about that most people with it don't know they have it until it gets severe like mine did. And it is often accompanied by an underlying condition, which is usually difficult to figure out, which makes SIBO so hard to treat.
Dealing with SIBO has been nothing but a challenge, I wake up each day hoping for the best, but prepared for whatever that day may bring, and it has proven to me how strong of a person I really am.
