
I think rcpd might be the diagnosis I’ve been waiting for.
Hi, I’m new here. Here’s a little bit about me:
I’ve had severe emetophobia my entire life since I was a young kid. I grew up with an emetophobic mom and she had an extremely emetophobic boyfriend, who she had my brother with who would act horrified of it and have me clean his up. It traumatized me, and I was sick a lot as a kid.
I would focus really hard on not vomiting through my hardest stomach aches as a kid. Sometimes it worked, and other times it didn’t. I feel like part of my rcpd was a learned habit from my emetophobia. I also think rcpd was a factor to the worsening of my phobia, due to struggling to breathe while trying to vomit. Since my body cannot properly expel the contents, I typically dry heave to the point of near fainting due to the inability to breathe, and have even injured myself (popped blood vessels in my eyes, and severe headaches) due to the intense dry heaving without true vomiting.
I also haven’t been able to burp for as long as I can remember, and in elementary school, I always had stomach aches to the point I was banned from going to the nurse as everyone accused me of faking it. In middle and high school, I was sent home multiple times mid-day due to extreme nausea from gurgles that would travel from my stomach up to my throat before completely dissipating and making me feel even worse. Tums stopped working, Rolaids stopped working, miralax makes me super sick, senna is the only relief I’ve ever had for the chronic constipation I’ve had since I was a fresh out of the womb baby. Oh, that’s another thing. Severe constipation has heightened my stomach discomfort significantly.
I have always hated having the hiccups because when I get them, I get them for hours on end. They make me super nauseous, give me headaches, and make my ribs hurt for days.
All of these have caused me to be in and out of doctors offices for years, and I’ve been diagnosed with chronic constipation/ibs-c, and given multiple laxatives including linzess, senna, Mira lax, etc. all of which suck.
I found out about RCPD after my post a year ago and someone commented about it. After another year of research and struggle, I think I finally found my diagnosis before a doctor ever could. I just wanted to post this to say thank you, because knowing there’s actually a name that identifies all of this horrible pain I’ve experienced for years and years on end, is extremely comforting. It checks all the boxes.
My next question would be - do you recommend Botox treatment to someone with severe emetophobia? I’ve read a lot from this Reddit about it making the gurgles worse, causing nausea and vomiting, all to dissipate in 3-6 months. Plus it’s expensive and I talk on the phone at work all day every day so I would have to take a lengthy period to adjust to the procedure and talking afterward, which is hard for me to do. My other question, what are my other options?
Thank you all in advance :)