A woman lives off a diet of digestive biscuits due to a rare stomach condition.
Talia Sinnott struggles to keep food down due to gastroparesis - a chronic illness which means her stomach struggles to process food. The 25-year-old eats up to 10 packets of plain biscuits and crackers a day to try and survive.
She was diagnosed with the rare condition four years ago and Talia’s illness was so bad she was sick up to 30 times a day.
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At one point, Talia was so ill that her weight plummeted by three stone until she weighed just five stone. For the last six months she has relied on a feeding tube to provide her with nutrients she needs and the only solid food she can eat are McVitie's digestives.
The trainee clinical psychologist is now trying to raise £80,000 to have a gastric pacemaker fitted which will help her stomach accept other foods. Talia, from Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, said: “It’s very hit and miss, some days the biscuits sit okay and sometimes they don’t.
“I can’t eat a lot in one go and I have to pick at them throughout the day. I also do this with Ritz crackers.
“It’s bizarre, some crackers I can have, some crackers I can’t. At the moment, I can eat crackers by itself, but I can drink squash.
“There is no pattern at all to my eating so it’s always a guessing game and I haven’t got a safe food I can rely on. One day I can be absolutely fine with eating a certain kind of food and then three days later I can’t tolerate it.
“I went through a stage of being able to stomach mash potato because it’s soft but now I can’t. It’s really difficult because it’s not like an intolerance where you can avoid a certain type of food - it’s very random.”
Talia's symptoms began in 2018 when she started “feeling full” and “food was sitting on her chest”. Her symptoms flared up intermittently but over the years, her symptoms became more aggressive and persistent.
She coped with the problem by eating smaller meals and her GP prescribed her medication which helped to alleviate her symptoms but only for a short time. But after her health rapidly declined at the start of this year and after several medical examinations, she was eventually diagnosed with gastroparesis.
Talia, from Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, said: “So little is known and understood about my chronic illness which is why it is often misdiagnosed, and people are left without a diagnosis for years and people are told it’s an eating disorder. I was very fortunate to get a quick diagnosis.
"Although my symptoms have been there since 2018, it is only this year that they have really been bad. So far, we have spent around £40,000 on tube insertions and appointments and I need another £40,000 for the gastric pacemaker to be fitted – therefore the fundraiser total is £80,000. At the moment the main priority is to increase my weight, so I’m fit and healthy for surgery.”
Talia hopes to have the fundraiser total in the next six months to have her pacemaker fit in the next year. To donate to her GoFundme page, click here.
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