Nurse forced to live without food or drink by rare condition gastroparesis

WHEN nurse Lynne Donaghy goes out for dinner with her twentysomething pals, she can only look on as they tuck into their meals.

Lynne, 29, has a rare condition which means she hasn’t been able to eat properly for five years and spends 12 hours a day hooked up to a feeding machine.

But, despite not being able to eat, what she really craves is a humble cup of tea.

She said: “I started vomiting constantly in 2011.

“I thought it was just a bug but I know now it wasn’t.”

Lynne suffers from gastroparesis, which means that she vomits after eating or drinking.

“Every day I want something when I’m around everyone eating and drinking,” Lynne explained.

“I have a cup of tea every day and accept that I’m going to bring it back up.

“My gran still says things like, ‘Can you not eat this or that’, she’s still trying to force me to eat.”

When Lynne was diagnosed in 2011, she was fitted with a feeding tube which went up her nose and fed into her bowels.

She gets her nutrition from a 700ml feeding bag, which takes 12 hours to process through a feeding pump.

But the bag only contains just over 1000 calories.

She said: “I lost about two stone when I was first diagnosed.

“I’m very short, I was always very petite, and didn’t need to lose any weight.

“I get very tired and, because of my weight, I have to be very careful.”

Lynne has to be connected to a feeding pump 12 hours a day (Stuart Maxwell / SWNS)

Glaswegian Lynne has always been an active person – she Represented Scotland in gymnastics at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

She quit soon after the Games because of a foot injury but still went to the gym regularly.

When she became ill, her constant fatigue made it difficult to exercise.

Paediatric nurse Lynne was out of work for a year while she was trying to discover exactly what was causing her illness.

In 2012, she had a gastric pacemaker fitted, which was supposed to stop her vomiting.

Lynne was able to eat normally for a month but it soon stopped working.

She said: “When I got the pacemaker, I was told it was the new thing, but the pacemaker only seems to work if you have diabetes.

“The worst time when I had the pacemaker was when I went out for dinner. I had a pasta dish with vegetables and, an hour later, my stomach was so sore.

“I was bringing it up and I was there for hours. I was out with friends but they ended up going home early.

“It wasn’t until I got home that I realised how bad it was.”

Even though she hasn’t been able to eat properly for years, Lynne still vomits every day.

She said: “I can still vomit bile with the pump. If I eat or drink anything at all it is so hard.

“Sometimes I feel really ill and I just want a cup of tea and I end up vomiting, to see if I’ll feel better.”

By the start of 2013, Lynne was back on the feeding pump.

“I went to Portugal on holiday, but I can’t drink so I had to be careful, but it was nice to get away.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to go again, but I’ll have to think about it. It was hard, but it is possible.

“I managed it last year, that was the first time.

“I had to take a case with all my feeding equipment and I hoped that nothing would happen to my tubes. I had to be really careful.”

Since her diagnosis, Lynne has struggled to maintain an active social life and has to make sure she still sees her friends.

She said: “I tried to because if you don’t these things then you have no social life.

“I go out to restaurants and just sit there because otherwise I’d just be stuck in the house.

“It is a big change.”

Do you suffer from a debilitating illness like Lynne? Contact our team by email at mail@sundaypost.com, by post at The Sunday Post, 80 Kingsway East, Dundee, DD4 8SL or call 0141 567 2776

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