"Normal" Need Not Apply

It's not exactly a secret that I'm a medical anomaly, an enigma of sorts.It's never what you think it is. Normal doesn't apply to me. I've had somewhere in the ballpark of 18 surgeries in my life, and those are the ones I can remember. For almost a year I've had severe dysphagia to the point where I actually choke,can't breathe, and the thought of "I don't want to die, please god no" actually goes through my mind. I've gotten to the point where I'm teaching my almost four year old to dial 9-1-1 if mommy chokes. So I start with my ear,nose & throat doctor whom I've been a patient of since I was born, the man is nothing less than a genius, and has literally saved my life on more than one occasion. He does the spelunking of my upper airway with a tiny little light in the office and says that my upper airway is bright red, likely the result of acid reflux. So I start various antacid treatments and proton pump inhibitors, I never felt the acid reflux, but apparently that can happen. I tried somewhere along the lines of half a dozen meds with no change. I do the barium swallow, drink some nasty chalk milkshake from hell, and swallow a big horse pill so they can watch me choke and almost throw up on myself. I watched the x ray while I was doing this, and could see how everything went to the left, the pill sat in my throat for MINUTES, not seconds before it finally went down, and you could see the stomach acid erupt like mt vesuvius. So I get referred to a gastroentorologist, lets just call him "Dr.Pepper" ... you'll understand why in a minute.





I go to the day surgery office of Dr.Pepper for an endoscopy. After the procedure Dr.Pepper exclaims that there was nothing structurally wrong with my esophagus, and there was no sign of damage by acid reflux. Um K. So I continue to choke or have food get stuck in my throat for weeks afterwards and then receive a call from Dr.Pepper's office to schedule an appointment for a follow up. Dr.Pepper might have found "something" but he'd rather discuss it in his office. Of course you do, you need your $10 co pay, maybe thats just me being cynical. But I digress... Anyways at the follow up Dr.Pepper more or less says he's "guessing" my choking episodes are being caused by something called Eosinophilic esophagitis. Which in layman's terms, means that my esophagus is having a local allergic reaction to an unknown source, and swells, hence causing my choking episodes . The only way to diagnose this is by taking a biopsy of the tissue from the esophagus, which he did, but they way it was conveyed to me was that there "wasn't a lot" of eosinopil's (the allergy cells), but it was elevated, so he was guessing that this was what it was.


splendid


So I went on a course of meds that was supposed to help treat this "allergic reaction". And surprise surprise, nothing happened. On my last appointment I told him that the medication was not working, and this is what he had to say (paraphrased)


"Well as long as you don't become malnourished and lose too much weight you'll be fine, unless you want to go on a long term schedule of prednisone, but that makes people fat and crazy"


fabulous Dr.Pepper, and where did you get your medical license, the online college of medicine of the cayman islands?!


I'm no doctor, but I'm failrly certain that the continuation of choking spells over a prolonged period of time cannot be favorable for the structure of my esophagus ... I'm just sayin .....
So with the lack of a satisfactory answer from the local butcher, I called up Beth Israel of Boston to make an appointment with an actual gastroenterologist. I just really don't think that this "diagnosis" is correct, and that this "Dr's" answer was satisfactory. Normal has never applied to me, so making your "best educated guess" isn't going to cut it Dr.Pepper.