Is there anything I can do to eat?
Hey guys small backstory then question and maybe wrap it up with some venting.
So I am a 25m who is a classically trained chef. It’s the only job I’ve ever loved and apparently the only job I can land. About 2 years ago while at work I started getting stomach aches. Every night they got progressively worse. They got so bad that I spent 4 nights in a row in an emergency room. Then I went to a GI and was diagnosed with EOE, and possibly a gallbladder issue. They gave me sucralfate, pantpropazol, and several other medications (sorry for misspelling of any meds it’s been awhile.) Nothing helped. I started the gerd diet, nothing helped. Stomach aches were not normal pain anymore. I’ve broken severe bones, slipped discs in my back, almost died of double pneumonia, but I would rather all that at once than experience a tenth of the pain these stomach aches give me. I squeezed my oak wood desk so tight I still have finger indentations of it. I wrote all my family goodbye notes because I thought surely I was dying. I even broke several blood capillaries and was sweating blood one night in the ER. (My family is religious so that really freaked them out lol). Finally after being tired of going to the GI with no results I got an allergy test. 42 food allergies. We confirmed it with blood work 3 separate times. 42 allergies. I can’t eat ANY vegetables. I can’t eat ANY fruit. I can’t even have black pepper. I am now on a bunch of supplement pills due to not being able to get many needed vitamins. I have tried reintroducing things slowly and every time I do the pain strikes (not immediately but later at night. If I eat at noon I’ll get pain starting about 8:45pm).
Question: are there any of the medications that would allow me to eat again without restriction?
Reason: I am broke. I have put in over 1400 job applications in the last year to no offers. I can’t do hard labor because I never know when the next flair up will happen and I have to call out because Benadryl is the only thing that puts me asleep to end the pain. I can’t afford a endoscopy every two weeks to better isolate my allergies as I’m already in severe medical debt over this and can’t find a job to pay for this. My wife is struggling taking care of me. I feel worthless. I’m scared to eat. I’ve lost 95lbs in the last year (40 of it was definitely much needed but still I’m now smaller than I was in middle school). The only places that will even consider interviewing me are restaurants, but I can’t cook because I have no palette any more. I can’t even taste something if it has pepper in it (which in the only restaurants that would pay me enough to afford treatment, is every single dish). I eat the most bland, horrible, unsatisfying diet and feel weak all the time. I need to be able to support my wife. My family even graciously sent me to college for a semester to learn software development. I now know how to code and am actively pursuing cybersecurity. But no one will even give me a call back. Half the time I don’t even get a rejection email. They just ghost. Every job from help desk to unpaid intern. I got rejected by Walmart. Not even with an interview. Straight up email rejection. I’ve had my resume professionally reviewed multiple times and reviewers seem to think my resume is perfectly fine. I want to cook. I want to eat with my family at a restaurant without everyone staring at me like a kicked puppy. I want my wife to be able to relax. I don’t care about giving myself a shot every week if that’s what it takes. I just can’t afford to go to the GI 30 more times before he tells me that. If any of these medications have allowed you to eat again without restriction please let me know what it is and how it’s taken. Sorry this is rambling I just am not in a good headspace and wanted everyone to understand why it’s so important to me to find a solution like this. Thank you in advance for ALL responses, even if it’s the bad news I’m fearing.