Friday, January 27, 2006
It's been a while since I've wrote in this thing. You know what I've found? Blogger deletes your old comments! That's my favorite part of blogging, even though I don't get all that much. :P
Well, as you can tell from my one-sentence previous post, I spent my winter break at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville Fla to see if a team of doctors there could figure out my phantom disease. (Yes, there's a branch down there if you didn't know). My folks and I drove all the way down there from DE; we would've had to have driven at least one direction completely and I'm afraid to fly because I'm worried that the pressure differential on takeoff/landing might cause me to choke on my stomach. Yuck!
On the way down we stopped at my cousins' house in Lumberton NC and watched Texas beat USC in the final minute of the Rose Bowl (Wahoo!), it was good 2 see them since I hadn't been to their house in many many years; usually we only meet at my grandma's in Fairfax for the holidays.
Anyway, the Clinic was a pretty nice place with great doctors; they were willing to listen to all the problems that I was having and weren't like some of the doctors I've had in the past where they have to "get onto the next patient" after 5 min. They re-ran me through all of the tests I've had done before and then some, including doing a neurology test where they found nothing! :O
But seriously, after doing the testing, the lead doc that was assigned to me said that I do indeed have a very bizarre condition (and finally convinced my parents that this wasn't something that was all in my head). One of the tests they made me swallow barium and after each sip, I belched the barium up along with a ton of air that was already in my stomach. In another test, the manometry test (once thought of by me as the tube from hell), they said that my esophagus has peristaltic contractions but they're all weak, and the sphincter was weak as well (more or less the same as last time). They also attached a capsule to my esophagus to measure the amount of acid that was coming up, and the doctor said, "It's the darndest thing, you belched off the receiver!" Nice to know there's a first time for everything.
So they pretty much determined the same thing that just about every other doc has said, that I have very severe reflux and belching (duh!) and have some sort of bizarre "air sucking" that causes air to go down into my stomach but they're not sure why it's happening. :( The doc was suggesting that I reconsider having stomach surgery to tighten the sphincter between my esophagus and stomach, but it's a 50/50 shot of whether it would help or make me worse! The reason being is that tightening the sphincter may stop the air sucking but if it doesn't it'll all get trapped and make me incredibly bloated all the time. I'm inclined to say it's the latter because when I take high doses of prokinetics, that's exactly what happens, i get really bloated!!
What exacerbates the situation even more is that it's not completely reversible if it doesn't work; damage is permanently done to parts of your digestive system. Another issue of health insurance, once I leave school I'm off health insurance and wouldn't be able to afford the surgery if I chose to go that route which means I'm back for another semester while I try to make this decision. Arrggghhh!!!!
In the meantime I'm trying another medical intuitive. I was telling her about my problem and she said that it was strange and not entirely consistent with reflux; part of my esophageal flow apparently points upwards instead of down; it's not so much bad reflux as it is, as she put it, "Your esophagus wants to vomit." Lovely. I figure I'll give energy healing another shot; at this point I don't have much to lose; what's the difference if I spend money since I feel so terrible that I can't even go out and do anything anywhere?
It's been almost a year since this godforsaken disease started and I don't know if there's any end in sight. Just trying to survive one day at a time...
Well, as you can tell from my one-sentence previous post, I spent my winter break at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville Fla to see if a team of doctors there could figure out my phantom disease. (Yes, there's a branch down there if you didn't know). My folks and I drove all the way down there from DE; we would've had to have driven at least one direction completely and I'm afraid to fly because I'm worried that the pressure differential on takeoff/landing might cause me to choke on my stomach. Yuck!
On the way down we stopped at my cousins' house in Lumberton NC and watched Texas beat USC in the final minute of the Rose Bowl (Wahoo!), it was good 2 see them since I hadn't been to their house in many many years; usually we only meet at my grandma's in Fairfax for the holidays.
Anyway, the Clinic was a pretty nice place with great doctors; they were willing to listen to all the problems that I was having and weren't like some of the doctors I've had in the past where they have to "get onto the next patient" after 5 min. They re-ran me through all of the tests I've had done before and then some, including doing a neurology test where they found nothing! :O
But seriously, after doing the testing, the lead doc that was assigned to me said that I do indeed have a very bizarre condition (and finally convinced my parents that this wasn't something that was all in my head). One of the tests they made me swallow barium and after each sip, I belched the barium up along with a ton of air that was already in my stomach. In another test, the manometry test (once thought of by me as the tube from hell), they said that my esophagus has peristaltic contractions but they're all weak, and the sphincter was weak as well (more or less the same as last time). They also attached a capsule to my esophagus to measure the amount of acid that was coming up, and the doctor said, "It's the darndest thing, you belched off the receiver!" Nice to know there's a first time for everything.
So they pretty much determined the same thing that just about every other doc has said, that I have very severe reflux and belching (duh!) and have some sort of bizarre "air sucking" that causes air to go down into my stomach but they're not sure why it's happening. :( The doc was suggesting that I reconsider having stomach surgery to tighten the sphincter between my esophagus and stomach, but it's a 50/50 shot of whether it would help or make me worse! The reason being is that tightening the sphincter may stop the air sucking but if it doesn't it'll all get trapped and make me incredibly bloated all the time. I'm inclined to say it's the latter because when I take high doses of prokinetics, that's exactly what happens, i get really bloated!!
What exacerbates the situation even more is that it's not completely reversible if it doesn't work; damage is permanently done to parts of your digestive system. Another issue of health insurance, once I leave school I'm off health insurance and wouldn't be able to afford the surgery if I chose to go that route which means I'm back for another semester while I try to make this decision. Arrggghhh!!!!
In the meantime I'm trying another medical intuitive. I was telling her about my problem and she said that it was strange and not entirely consistent with reflux; part of my esophageal flow apparently points upwards instead of down; it's not so much bad reflux as it is, as she put it, "Your esophagus wants to vomit." Lovely. I figure I'll give energy healing another shot; at this point I don't have much to lose; what's the difference if I spend money since I feel so terrible that I can't even go out and do anything anywhere?
It's been almost a year since this godforsaken disease started and I don't know if there's any end in sight. Just trying to survive one day at a time...
