- A 38-year-old father took 2 doses of Mounjaro, and then suddenly started violently vomiting.
- His doctors diagnosed him with gastroparesis, a paralyzed stomach.
Blake was having a normal day at his desk when it happened.
Suddenly "somebody flipped a switch," he said.
He sprang up and rushed toward the bathroom. But before he could get all the way to the toilet, his body violently threw out the contents of his stomach.
"Projectile vomiting unlike anything I've ever experienced," he said. "I didn't feel bad. I just started throwing up with no warning, and then it continued for the better part of nine days."
Blake, who asked Business Insider to withhold his last name for privacy, had recently started taking the weekly diabetes medication Mounjaro, which is also widely used for weight loss. He'd only injected two doses so far, and wasn't feeling any noticeable effects of the medication yet.
After around 10 days of severe dehydration, ER visits, and overnight stays in the hospital, feeding tubes, and stomach tests, his doctors diagnosed him with gastroparesis, a form of stomach paralysis. He said his doctors suspect that the two doses of Mounjaro he took are at fault for the new condition, and that he'll probably have to live with this issue for life.
"I had no intention of any kind of weight loss or anything," Blake told BI. "I definitely had no desire to vomit myself away 25-30 pounds in two and a half weeks. That was not the objective."
Blake said he was just trying out a new medication that his doctor thought might better help control his blood sugar, caused by the Type 2 diabetes he's lived with since his 20s. He never expected this drug to mess with the way his stomach processed food.
So earlier this month, Blake filed a lawsuit against drugmaker Eli Lilly, saying he wasn't properly warned about the possibility for serious, lifelong stomach issues tied to Mounjaro.
'I want somebody to be accountable'
"I want somebody to be accountable," he said. "I wouldn't touch this stuff with a 10-foot pole, and I would advise anybody that would be willing to listen to try everything you possibly can before you even consider this."
Both Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk told BI that delayed gastric emptying is simply part of the deal with GLP-1 drugs. This is well known, they say. It's actually part of the way the drugs work: they slow down your digestive system. Some people's stomachs slow down a little, some slow down a lot. And for some patients, like Blake, their stomach can shut down entirely. That's why GLP1s are not recommended for people with a history of stomach paralysis or severe gastrointestinal issues.
Regulators can set up basic guardrails aimed at keeping GLP-1s away from patients with a health history that suggests they may have a bad reaction to this class of medications, but the reality is it's often next to impossible for doctors to predict exactly which patients will have these kinds of complications when trying a new medicine.
Morgan and Morgan, the law firm representing Blake's case, says they have screened more than 10,000 gastroparesis cases nationwide that may be linked to GLP-1 use, which are under active investigation. They've filed more than a dozen lawsuits so far, including Blake's, and the case of another woman named Jaclyn, who took both Ozempic and Mounjaro. (Novo Nordisk has filed a motion to dismiss her lawsuit.)
Eating less meat, and getting used to riding out the bad days
Blake, a former "meat and potatoes guy" from the South, is now on a monthslong dietary quest, trying out all kinds of different diets he'd never heard of before, aiming to find the one that his stomach will best tolerate. So far, the going has been rough.
"We've tried little cycles of gluten-free, and then protein reduction diets," he said.
He said he still has bad days. Flare-ups, he calls them. His employer has allowed him more flexible scheduling now, so if he needs to go home and shower or clean up after failing to make it to the bathroom, he can.
"I'm a 40-year-old man that's had accidents at work because I get no warning, and I wouldn't wish that upon anybody," he said.
Blake was breathing heavily, walking around his office throughout our phone interview, while taking his lunch break. He said he's trying to get in as much exercise as he can these days, since his stomach can't tolerate metformin anymore, the medication he was using previously for blood glucose control.
Instead, he's on insulin — a frustrating change for a guy who doesn't like needles, he said.
"I'm getting quite the education," Blake added.
He's starting to recover financially from the time he took off work, and is learning a lot about dietary restrictions and intolerances. But there were dark days in the summer and the fall of 2023, when he worried about providing for his family — when he felt so close to death; when his wife had to take the reins at home, caring for their three boys.
"This was as defeated as I've ever felt or been in my entire life," he said. Not a particularly religious person before, Blake reached out to a friend who's a pastor for some spiritual support. "He kind of took me in, and was trying to talk me through trying to keep my head up."
"I really hope that nobody knew how severe this could be and didn't tell me," he said.