I am a far cry from the lad my family used to call 'the ...

1. Guest 27 July 2005 at 10:18AM
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   I am a far cry from the lad my family used to call 'the bin'. Food was one of my hobbies until Oct, 2004. Now, I stare at the clock and think, my god it's nearly feeding time again; two and a half hours, and four times in the microwave, it took once to eat a meal. The feeling of every bite of food as it goes down so far; steadily mounting until it rises to the back of your throat, then a large glob of mucous being thrown up. At least when you've brought it up that god awful pain goes from your chest. Eating out is a definite no-no, to be in that sort of pain in the middle of an eatery - no thanks.

   I was sort of disappointed when the doctor said it was not H.Pylori, for I heard, with antibiotics, this could be gone in a matter of weeks. If I didn't have the kids to consider I would probably just stop eating; the constant hunger makes me feel that I have. The doctor failed to weigh me, even when I showed her that my freshly washed jeans were hanging off; two holes I have had to add to my belt to keep the trousers up. Having a fast metabolism I was already slightly underweight before this. My brother and his wife, who is a doctor, didn't help when they reminded me of our family history of hernias, polyps and stomach cancer, etc. They advised me to tell the GP of this so as to have a 'scope' arranged; I did and it made no odds to the doctor. All this served to do was make me sound like a hypochondriac; it was shameful. I must have appeared to be like those people who read about a disease and suddenly have it. I will just have to keep taking my Zoton in the hope that one day this might go away.

   [i:58ee43f724]This message was automatically imported from the original Patient Experience[/i:58ee43f724]

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2. Guest 8 May 2006 at 14:16PM

   It is so fascinating to read your description of those awful symptoms as it rings so true!! I also regularly suffer from that feeling of food getting 'stuck' in my gullet combined with searing pain on its way down, then I often bring up huge globules of mucus (sometimes also containing the bite of food I just took). I get this not just from food (all kinds, I can't narrow it down to certain food types) but also cold drinks, including still water which I have to sip very slowly in order for it to go down. I have never been over or under weight and have no family history of stomach complications.

   When I first experienced these symptoms my GP discovered that I had helicobacter and I got treated with antibiotics over a year ago, but my symptoms have continued since then, regardless. I've been on an NHS waiting list for a 'routine' endoscopy for a year, taking Emyprasol to reduce acid, but it doesn't prevent the attacks.

   I agree about not eating out - I try it sometimes but I can never predict when I'm going to have an 'attack' and I have to disappear into the toilets for a while when one does occur, which is very embarassing. It's so hard to describe to others exactly what such an attack feels like and, like you, I fear that I'll just have to live with this for the rest of my life...

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3. Guest 14 May 2006 at 04:18AM

   Hello I too had this problem, The key word HAD, I couldnt even drink water without it flying right up and out. The doctors did a surgery on me I beleave the proper saying is "Nissan fundaplacation" the surgery went well and no more vomiting, But I can never throw up ever.

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4. Michael27 14 February 2012 at 23:58PM

   I had just the same thing as you describe; lost a few stone in weight, could hardly keep anything down, took ages to eat just a small amount, food or drink would come back up into my mouth when I slept.....and as I was always skinny anyway, with high metabolism - I became very thin.

   When I went to the hospital, they finally diagnosed it as ACHALASIA: basically, the muscle at the top of your stomach / bottom of your esophagus tensing up, not relaxing to let food through. So you can only eat an esophagus full before it starts going down really slowly - or not at all.

   The options they gave to make the muscle 'relax' (actually they went for just incapacitating it, rather than relaxing it - which may have been better in hindsight) were:

   1> opening me up to cut the muscle and sewing it back more loose,

   2> injecting the muscle to make it go limp

   3> going through the mouth with a small balloon which they inflate when its 'inside' the muscle ring to incapacitate it.

   I actually went for the 3rd option. Maybe a mistake. Why? Because

   a) you get acid coming back up as the muscle no longer closes to block flow from stomach to the esophagus, and

   b) as the earlier commenter said, you are unable to throw up any more - which is actually really annoying on the rare occasion you know you want/need to be sick.

   c) probably most significantly: acid reflux can lead to increased chance of esophagal cancer as far as I can tell, maybe not dramatically, but definitely to some degree , it may be significant, I'm not sure. But having acid reflux regularly in your esophagus is obviously not good in the long run.

   Most of these side effects would probably come with each of the above 'solutions' to a greater or lesser degree, you'd have to look into it.

   My advice, or what I would do now, would be to see if there was some method for getting the muscle to relax, without just zapping it.

   If you had a tight muscle anywhere else you might try to relax it through exercises, or some psychological way to reverse the reason why you started tightening it up.

   I would just look into it more...rather than just the quick chop, paralyse or explode it methods.

   Although it must be said, I was very thin, and my family and friends were worried, and something needs to be done eventually, i guess.

   a few links:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achalasia

   http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Acalasia

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