Thank you all for your in depth advice! Isn't this site great??

I saw the dr again on Monday, and I don't have the h pylori bacteria. I was a bit disappointed by that because it would have meant an "easy" solution with antibiotics. My haemoglobin was apparently fine at "13.8". Anyway, she has prescribed me 20mg of Famotidine (H2 inhibitor) twice daily and 30mg of Lansoprazole (proton pump inhibitor) once a day, and also referred me to the hospital for an endoscopy. Oh well.

I'm keeping the symptoms fairly well under control, and I really think the Famotidine is helping. I don't find that tea, decaf coffee, tomatoes or chocolate particularly make it worse, although hot drinks do upset me. I have also discovered that salty and spicy food cause pain, so I am weeding out those recipes that contain those things. I've stopped adding salt & pepper to my meals for the time being, although I haven't noticed that pepper causes a problem yet. The most important thing to avoid pain is not to overfill my stomach.

Having had time to think about the cause, my take on the situation is this. As I said before, I had gastritis as a teenager, so I may well be susceptible to this kind of stomach ailment. Also, last Feb, my doc recommended that I start taking a "baby" aspirin to thin the blood (I had a minor stroke 9 years ago) and I also had an extremely stressful year at work in 2002. So, basically, I think it was caused by the NSAID combined with lots of stress on my sensitive stomach! I have stopped work and the aspirin, so I just hope it will be plain sailing to full health from here!

Katy