I’m feeling pretty fed up (get it?) with side effects from Ozempic, primarily the gastrointestinal ones. For the past three or so weeks, I’ve had painful gas that feels sometimes like an alien’s about to burst from my abdomen and sometimes like I’m a balloon in need of a needle to pop me. Yesterday I went to the grocery store in search of Tate’s Bake Shop gluten-free ginger cookies (hey, ginger is supposed to help with stomach pain!) and when they didn’t have those, I thought I should try to find something my husband and I could have for dinner. His long COVID is holding him down right now so firmly that he doesn’t even feel safe driving, let alone wandering a grocery store. But with every step I took through the store, my stomach pain grew, until I was walking hunched over and probably also wore my agony openly on my face. I’ve been told that when I feel like that, my face gets pale except for the freckles, which stand out like they were drawn on with brown marker
And what had I eaten prior to going to the store? A piece of toast with Yorkshire tea for breakfast around 6am, and a small bowl of Cheerios with oat milk around 11:30. Nothing weird or wild, nothing that should have set off my sensitive digestive system (it’s been years since I could have coffee, artificial sweeteners, banana, avocado, mango, more than a tablespoon of dairy unless I also take a dairy enzyme to help me digest it, and more I’m probably forgetting). I also don’t eat gluten anymore, after blood tests found I was quite sensitive to it (though an endoscopy found no celiac disease, lucky for me), and I haven’t eaten beef since the year 2000.
It doesn’t actually seem to make any difference what I eat, in terms of the nausea or gas pain side effects of Ozempic. Honestly, this does not help me to make good food decisions. Knowing I can’t put too much in my stomach in terms of quantity—that is one thing that makes the pain worse—I have been known to say, “Screw it! I’m having a peanut butter cup.” That might be the entirety of my lunch, but it’s not particularly healthy. I mean, some carrots and hummus would be better, but the thought of anything bean-related ratchets up the nausea. I also had a really terrible bout of stomach pain after eating an egg on some instant grits, so I’ve been avoiding eggs—my go-to protein up until recently.
I did finally contact my doctor, who wrote a prescription for .5 mg of Ozempic, down from the 1 mg I’ve been taking for 3 weeks. I’m hoping this brings the side effects down into the “bearable” range. Because I can take different kinds of pain fairly well, but with stomach pain I’m a basket case. I can’t think, can barely move, and want more than anything to go to sleep and wake up without that pain. That isn’t exactly the recipe for a productive day, which explains why I didn’t get anything written and sent out to y’all last week.
I will say this: I’m down about 14 pounds, and my clothes fit more loosely. My husband said he didn’t notice because I generally wear loose clothes anyway, but I can see that the shoulders of my t-shirts are not where they used to be. If the stomach pain side effects don’t resolve and I go off Ozempic, two things are very likely: 1) I’ll gain back that 14 pounds and possibly more and 2) it will take over a month for the side effects to go away. Because of those two outcomes, I’ll continue to try, on a lower dose, for now. And for those of you who deal with stomach pain on a regular basis, you have my absolute sympathy.
p.s. I can’t figure out how to put captions with images here, but imagine that under the 2nd image it says, “Yes, I do realize I’m whining.”
Fingers crossed that lowering the dose reduces your pain! I can relate to having pain like that, and I'm so sorry you're dealing with it right now. It makes life so hard.