Botox Injection for Gastroperesis

I was able to get my botox injection done today to see if it helps my gastroparesis. The botox is injected into the pylorus muscle, which is the muscle that acts as a valve to let food out of the stomach into the intestines. The goal is that by injecting the botox into this muscle it relaxes and allows the food to pass faster through my stomach. This will hopefully mean that  I will have less nausea, abdominal pain, and feeling full very quickly. We will not know if this worked for another few days because there is swelling of the muscle from the injections before it ultimately relaxes.

This procedure is done through a scope. The scope is passed through your mouth, down your throat, and into you stomach. The needle is then passed through your stomach into the pylorus muscle. Thankfully this procedure is able to be done under twilight sedation, so you continue breathing on your own and do not need a breathing tube. There are virtually no risk to this procedure, so that was very reassuring!

The procedure went very well and I only had a bit of low blood pressure, which is completely normal for me! I have been able to eat a small meal and am feeling pretty good! My stomach is sore on the left hand side, which is where they did the injection. I am going to take some anti-inflammatory medication (a prescription that is similar to Aleve) to help decrease the swelling a little bit because as the night goes I am becoming more and more sore.

Like I said we will know in a few days if this procedure worked and if it does I will be contacting Cleveland Clinic to hopefully procedure with surgery to permanently open the pylorus muscle up since the botox is only a temporary solution (it last about 6-12 weeks typically). They also took some biopsies from my stomach to test for another condition, so I will get the results back from that by the end of the week and provide more information on that!

My hip surgery is still set for next Tuesday (5/17), so I am excited for that so that I can get my hip feeling better again!