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Thursday, May 15, 2003 BY FORD TURNER When Carissa Haston leaves for Florida today, it will be a case of the patient going to lecture the doctors. Haston is battling gastroparesis, an oft-misunderstood condition that paralyzes the stomach. She is scheduled to speak Saturday to doctors at a training session in Orlando run by Medtronic, an international manufacturer of medical devices. She will talk about her own life-disrupting case and about the nonprofit organization she started from her Fairview Twp. home, Gastroparesis Patient Association for Cures and Treatments, or G-PACT. Haston has not digested solid food in three years. She has a catheter that sends medication into her chest and a food tube that sends nourishment into her stomach. The Florida trip marks a milestone for the group she created to help other gastroparesis sufferers. "It gives us credibility," said Haston, who is 25 and graduated from Messiah College in 2000. Joe McGrath, a spokesman for Minnesota-based Medtronic, said Haston's appearance will help alert doctors to the goals of G-PACT. The session will come on the first day of Digestive Disease Week, the biggest annual gathering of gastroenterologists nationwide. Haston was relatively healthy until 1994. That's when she started to have trouble keeping food down. She first thought it might be stress or a dietary problem. She later learned that the stomach, like the heart, is a muscle whose flexings are controlled by electrical impulses -- and her stomach's impulses weren't right. In 1996, she took part in a nine-patient research study. Ten wires inserted into her abdomen so they reached the lining of her stomach were hooked up to a battery pack hanging on her belt. It was an early version of a "gastric pacer," which, like a heart pacemaker, sends electrical impulses to the muscle tissue. "It helped seven out of the nine people in the study. It let them get those [food] tubes taken out," she said. Since then, the "pacer" devices have received federal approval. Medtronic manufactures them. McGrath said the company's "gastric stimulation system" is internal, with no protruding wires, and it works like a heart pacemaker. "It stimulates the nerves in the stomach wall, which reduces the intensity or the frequency of the chronic nausea and vomiting associated with gastroparesis," McGrath said. Haston, however, has learned she cannot use one. Her body rejects foreign objects to such an extent that she has been hospitalized three times in the past nine months because of infections related to her tubes. But speaking to the doctors will give her a chance to promote G-PACT, which in less than two years has helped many gastroparesis sufferers seek remedies, including gastric pacers. Among other things, the group has helped patients get approvals from insurance companies. "Right now, a lot of the insurance companies have it listed as an experimental procedure, and it's not," Haston said. Haston is often so sick she cannot leave her home. She formed G-PACT working solely over the Internet and telephone. This weekend at Orlando, she and other G-PACT members will meet face-to-face for the first time. Her life with gastroparesis has been a struggle. "I get depressed at
times. I mean, who wouldn't," she said. "But as long as I keep
busy, doing this kind of stuff, it really helps out. If I didn't do this
stuff, I would be a mess." |
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