I am 39 yrs old and female. For about a week I have been having pain in my stomach directly below my sternum and sometimes I have pain in my chest. It feels like it would be an ulcer, even though Ive never had one before, but it doesnt really seem to help if I take any OTC meds for it. Milk helps slightly, but not for long. When it gets really going it doesnt seem to help if I eat or not. My 13 yr old daughter then came to me with the same symptoms last night. The only thing I can think of is we both have bad case of stomach flu couple weeks ago.. could that have caused injury to our stomachs? I HATE it! Help

The most likely cause of epigastric pain (pain below the sternum, in the area of the stomach) of less than 2 weeks is viral, especially if someone else in the family comes down with similar symptoms.  When the virus is in the stomach, it tends to not only cause stomach pain, but also nausea or even vomiting.

When the virus is mainly in the small intestine, the pain is typically lower in the mid-abdomen area, and if the stomach is not involved, will not have as much nausea.  Because the food may not be properly digested, there may be loose stools or diarrhea associated with it.

Wherever the virus infects, the body will mount an immune response to get rid of the virus.  If the immune system has seen the attacking virus or a close relative to it, the body should rid itself of it in a few days, or you may not even have any symptoms.

If the immune system has to identify the virus as new, it will take 10 to 14 days to build the army to rid your body of the symptoms.  Then the body has to heal the damage left by the virus, which may take a few days or weeks, depending on the extent of the damage and if the intestinal tract is permitted to rest and heal.

If nausea or vomiting is present, try ginger.  Don’t feel like you need to force yourself to eat if you are not hungry–when your body is ready to accept food, you will experience hunger.  Until then, let it rest with fluids as the only intake.