Scots student loses half her body weight in six months after stomach paralysis 'hell'

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A 'massive foodie' who lost half her body weight in six months after waking up one day to find she was unable to eat is a "shell" of who she once was after being diagnosed with stomach paralysis.

Shannon Dunbar-Dawe suddenly developed bloating and nausea in May 2022. The 30-year-old Glaswegian lost nearly half her body weight after spending months "hunched over the toilet" in pain with sickness and was unable to eat more than a couple of digestive biscuits daily without looking "six months pregnant" due to stomach swelling.

Dismissed by doctors as "anxiety" or an "eating disorder", Shannon was admitted to hospital in July 2023 where she was force fed during the "worst two weeks of her life", she told Glasgow Live.

After consulting a private doctor, the former accounting student was "relieved" to be finally diagnosed with gastroparesis and was fitted with a feeding tube as the only way she can consume food. Gastroparesis is a rare condition that paralyses the stomach's nerves and muscles making food digestion take longer and it is generally not known what causes it.

Shannon told her story: "It was really scary. I just woke up one day and never felt well again. It started off with a lot of nausea and feeling really, really full after having even a couple of bites of food. I had pain and this horrible burning in my stomach.

"Whenever I tried to eat anything the nausea would just be awful my stomach would swell up. I'd look six months pregnant. The swelling was that bad. I could eat literally one bite of food and it would feel like I'd eaten an entire buffet.

"Before it all started I weighed 64kg. I was a healthy size 10 to 12. I loved my food, I was a massive foodie. I was always stuffing my face. Within six months I had dropped to 40kg."

Shannon spent 10 days in hospital after her pain became "unbearable" but was sent away with no answers. She was forced to quit her accountancy studies.

She continued "It got to a point where the pain was unbearable and I went to accident and emergency.

"They initially said they thought I had gastritis, inflammation of the stomach. But they didn't do any tests to have a look down there so they were just going off what information they had.

"I spent 10 days in the hospital. They told me they'd arrange an endoscopy in the coming months and that was it. I was just sent home. I spent from morning until night in the bathroom hunched over the toilet because I just felt so sick. I would take my laptop to the bathroom and just watch stuff and sit there. That was my life for months."

She was referred to a gastroenterologist in May 2023 when her condition worsened, but claims she was misdiagnosed with an eating disorder.

Shannon said: "I was basically surviving on two or three digestive biscuits a day and not much else and coffee. It was horrible.

"In May 2023 they did a CT scan of my abdomen and they couldn't see anything. They were like 'you know what, you're a young woman, you have anxiety, this is just anorexia, you're doing this to yourself'.

"In July I ended up in hospital because I couldn't keep anything down, not even liquids. The first thing they did was they sent a psychiatrist in to see me. They put me on a mental health hold for two weeks. I was watched 24/7. I couldn't even go to the bathroom in peace.

"They force fed me for two solid weeks. They didn't care how sick I was. It was like curries and chilis and things. I can't have milk, I'm lactose intolerant, but they were giving me things with milk and cheese.

"No one would listen to me. I spent two weeks crying my eyes out alone in a hospital room. My sister came to visit a lot. It was honestly the worst two weeks of my life. I cannot even begin to describe how horrendous it was. I lost more weight while I was there.

"By the end of two weeks in order to get out I had to be like 'I accept what you're saying, I will get help please let me go'. After two weeks of absolute hell I managed to get out of the hospital."

Consulting a private gastroenterologist in July 2023, she was "relieved" to finally be diagnosed with gastroparesis.

Shannon said: "Within five minutes of meeting me he said 'it sounds like you have gastroparesis.' I literally cried during the appointment because somebody was finally listening to me. It was just such a relief. There's no cure and treatment options are extremely limited."

Medication to speed up her stomach didn't work and Shannon had a feeding tube surgically placed in her stomach which she uses to run a feed every night, which she described as "excruciating".

A GoFundMe page set up for Shannon aims to raise £50,000 to enable her to have a gastric pacemaker, a medical device used to improve gastric emptying, surgically fitted because it is currently unavailable to non-diabetic patients under the NHS.

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Shannon said: "I'm a shell of who I used to be, which is hard not only for me but the people around me to see how much things have changed.

"The doctor that I spoke to says he's confident that having the pacemaker fitted would restore some quality of life and I might be able to eat soft foods again and liquids and one day hopefully have my feeding tube removed.

"Now I'm so underweight that I don't currently qualify for the pacemaker surgery. Whereas if this had been done a year and a half ago when I first started having symptoms I was qualified for the surgery straight away and might not have needed to unnecessarily suffer for the past two and a half years.

"It's going to be the fight of my life trying to desperately gain weight over the next however long it takes to meet our fundraising goal."

Now the former student aims to spread awareness of her rare condition to ensure people get diagnosed quicker.

Shannon said: "The amount of times that I've come across cases of young women being told 'it's all in your head, it's anorexia' and being diagnosed with eating disorders or IBS because they refuse to do proper testing and actually get to the root of why these women are having stomach issues. It's horrendous."

A spokesperson for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: "This patient has raised her concerns through our complaints process.

"Though we are unable to comment on individual patient cases due to confidentiality, we are sorry we were unable to meet her expectations. At all times the patient's concerns were taken seriously by the clinicians involved, and attempts were made to resolve them."

You can donate to Shannon's fundraiser here.

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