zooey

I’m sorry to hear that, Billy. I was hoping you were in the clear, since I hadn’t seen you refer to cancer for quite a while. All the best.

My surgery is an attempt to address a problem I’ve had for more than 20 years. Sometime back in the 90s, I started experiencing esophageal problems. Once in a while, a bite of food would come to a full stop right above my stomach. Over the years, I realized a couple of things about this: there seemed to be a correlation to stress and to strong hunger. It was more likely to happen under one of both of those conditions. I learned there were two ways to move the food…down, with small sips of lukewarm water – ice water made the cramp worse – or by heaving it up. In severe cases, I would be swallowing water which would back up inside my esophagus, increasing the discomfort, and then go heave until it came out. I became the slowest-eating, most thorough-chewing human on the planet, and most of the time I could take small sips of warm water and whish the food past the blockage, and continue eating. Some bad cases of it would take as much as 45 minutes or so to clear the blockage, at which point I would be completely fatigued, and my appetite destroyed. I left behind full plates of food several times. Once it lasted all night long, around 8 hours. I can’t even swallow saliva when I have a blockage.

Well, this isn’t good. My family got used to it, but it was pretty bad any time it happened in public such as a restaurant or wedding reception where people are coming in and out of the bathroom while I was hunched over a sink or toilet, face all red, tears leaking out of my eyes, trying to explain to people that I was actually okay…this happens…I’m fine, really…sorry! I remember it happening during a Seahawks game at my favorite sports bar where I watched most of the 99 season. I had just received a big old breakfast, and had to leave for the parking lot where I missed the entire first quarter of the game.

Anyway. My doctor seemed confused by this, and recommended a Barium swallow (which I knew wouldn’t reveal anything, and it didn’t, because unless I was having a spasm at that time, everything would look normal). He prescribed nitroglycerin to take when I had a spasm, and it didn’t do anything. Eventually I got an endoscopy during which they discovered scar damage, and while they were down there, they expanded a balloon to stretch my esophagus a bit. That relieved me for several months. At some point in there, they had me taking Prilosec, and Pepcid, and those helped for a while.

So…this thing runs in the family. One of my idiot brothers has it, and my mom’s mom actually died of it when she was 96. She finally perforated her esophagus which let stomach acid leak through into her body cavity, and she sort of digested herself. Which isn’t an outcome I desire to share. So a couple years ago, my idiot brother (who is an anesthesiologist) told me to go get another endocopy. I did, and got a dilation, and another prescription for Prilosec. And they decided to do a CT scan. I think that is when they discovered I have a hiatal hernia.

So what had happened is that my esophagus had kind moved up through the thoracic diaphragm. Within the guts, everything is pressurized, basically. But with my sphincter having moved up through the diaphragm into the chest cavity, there was inadequate pressure on the lower esophageal sphincter, and so it wasn’t working right. It didn’t keep acid from shooting up into my esophagus. Looks like this:

Anyway, for the past couple of years I’ve been okay, eating without having spasms. That’s because I’ve been getting endoscopies and dilations about every 4 months, and taking Prilosec everyday which cuts acid production down about 90% or something. This isn’t really a great long term solution, however, since every time one has a dilation, there is a risk of perforating the esophagus. Furthermore…although the doctors didn’t seem concerned about it…the manufacturers of these medicines like Prilosec say to take it for 14 days, three courses a year. Now I have a suspicion that pharmaceutical companies like to make a lot of money, and I think if it was safe to take this drug daily, they would gladly encourage me to do so. And a few months ago, some users sued one of the companies because they got kidney damage from using the drugs. So overusing drugs and 3 or 4 dilations a year – while it has made my life a lot better – seems like a bad idea since I’d like to kick around another 30 years or so.

So a GI doctor suggested this surgery. He pulled the esophagus back down to where it should be, and then wrapped the fundus (the high part of the stomach) around the esophagus, and stitched it all together. The worse case scenario is that it doesn’t work because my sphincter is already shot, or something, but in any event, I will be no worse off than before. Best case…it works, and I can eat, drink, and be merry all my remaining days without being on drugs. He also told me that the scar tissue would heal a bit. It seemed like a no-brainer to give it a try, so I waited until school was out, and had the surgery on Friday.

Now I’m on a completely liquid diet for a couple of weeks, and can’t do any real labor for 4-6 weeks (which is a bit of a problem since I have to repair two leaking roofs, and replace a fence and a deck), but the surgery went well, and now I’m just taking drugs and lying in bed here for a while.

In lieu of flowers, please send dog poo to the White House.

Zooey wrote:

I’m sorry to hear that, Billy. I was hoping you were in the clear, since I hadn’t seen you refer to cancer for quite a while. All the best.

Thanks, Zooey. It sounds like we had similar mindsets regarding when and where to talk about our travails. I had no idea you were going through all of that, and it sounds like you’ve dealt with it with some serious toughness and stoicism. The Rams could use someone like you to play linebacker!!

Quick summary of my own deal: I pretty much stopped talking about it online when the treatments became close to routine. Maintenance chemo was mostly just a fact of life from roughly 2003 on — after the first full treatment — with a year’s break now and again. Two serious flareups in the 2000s, and another in 2013 before this last one, which is the worst of all.

Was also recently disabused of an earlier notion that recurrences weren’t that big a deal, because they’d just, well, do chemo again. My latest doctor said these things add up — I read “cumulative effect” between the lines — and they’re really pushing me toward stem cells now.

Will post about that sometime in the future. It was pretty interesting, but depressing, too. It seems we’re not as advanced there as I thought we’d be by now.

Best wishes, Zooey. You know all of this, of course, but spend as much time as you can with family and your closest friends. That’s what counts when all is said and done.

All the best to BillyT and zooey.

Hey Billy and Zooey, I wish you both the best of health.

Zooey, that’s really interesting to me. I had a hiatal hernia show up on a cat scan a few years back. I’ve been taking omeprazole for years. I try not to take it all the time but I probably take it more than I should. I talked to my doctor about it but he didn’t seem very concerned. He said they usually don’t do surgery unless there’s a problem. Well, reflux by itself does not seem to be a problem, as far as he’s concerned and in fact he didn’t think the hernia really contributed much to that which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but whatever.

I don’t get spasms when I eat but sometimes I wake up with acid coming up in my throat and one time I sucked some of it into my lungs which set off a really bad asthma attack.

One way I can reduce acid is my diet–which is awful really. The pills help some. Years ago I had some sort of spasm there and was prescribed reglan(i think it was called)which helped the situation. But mainly for now–I should eat better–avoid certain foods(tomato based stuff, cokes), that really make it bad. I hope this works for you. It would be nice to know that the surgery is effective if I ever need it.

Good luck.

PA Ram wrote:

Hey Billy and Zooey, I wish you both the best of health.

Zooey, that’s really interesting to me. I had a hiatal hernia show up on a cat scan a few years back. I’ve been taking omeprazole for years. I try not to take it all the time but I probably take it more than I should. I talked to my doctor about it but he didn’t seem very concerned. He said they usually don’t do surgery unless there’s a problem. Well, reflux by itself does not seem to be a problem, as far as he’s concerned and in fact he didn’t think the hernia really contributed much to that which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but whatever.

I don’t get spasms when I eat but sometimes I wake up with acid coming up in my throat and one time I sucked some of it into my lungs which set off a really bad asthma attack.

One way I can reduce acid is my diet–which is awful really. The pills help some. Years ago I had some sort of spasm there and was prescribed reglan(i think it was called)which helped the situation. But mainly for now–I should eat better–avoid certain foods(tomato based stuff, cokes), that really make it bad. I hope this works for you. It would be nice to know that the surgery is effective if I ever need it.

Good luck.

Yeah, I have woken up a few times with acid eruptions shooting up into my mouth.

Once I’m back on a regular diet, I am going to decrease my intake of omeprazole, and hope to eliminate it entirely. I figure give this about 3 months, and if I am not suffering acid reflux, and not having the spasms, then it’s a clear win. I will let you know.

You should get an endoscopy, though, and see if your esophagus is developing scar tissue. I don’t know…if you aren’t having difficulty swallowing, maybe you are okay. I think the blockages I was experiencing indicated a risk of perforating the esophagus at some point. We’ll see.

But I sure would think that the hernia is directly related to the reflux. All of my doctors agreed that it was the primary cause of all my disturbances.

Btw, at the risk of turning this all into that wonderful scene from Jaws, where they’re trading war stories and showing their scars . . .

I’ve been having this horrible cough since the day after Thanksgiving, and the diagnosis has gone from acute bronchitis, to a combination of the cancer and the bronchitis, to just the cancer, to fluid around the lungs, to fluid around the heart and the lungs — thanks to a recent visit to a pulmonary doctor — and it now looks like it’s settled down to this:

A trifecta of sorts:

1. Severe sinus issues
2. Severe acid reflux
3. Mild asthma

So, kinda an attack from above, from below, and right there in the coughing zone itself.

On several medicines, including for the acid reflux, Flonase for the sinuses, an asthma inhaler, etc. etc.

I, too, am being told to cut out soda, coffee and chocolate, with the latter one being the biggest sacrifice. I mean, why can’t they ask me to stop eating sardines and liver? That would be easy. I hate them anyway!

For you veterans of these gastrointestinal wars — or whatever the proper term would be — advice is more than welcome.