my GERD

As I stated in a previous post, I have experienced GERD since childhood.  I can remember as a very young child waking up in the night with this burning dripping sensation down my throat.  This continued throughout all of my childhood.  As I grew into adolescence, I continued to battle regular indigestion and worsening acid problems.  The only treatment was Rolaids, which my father kept on-hand for his own use.  I noticed that my indigestion always worsened when drinking frozen condensed orange juice, fried foods mainly including fried fish, and other food and drink.  However, I had no interest in doing anything other than pursuing sports, college, and friends.

As time progressed, I think my GERD actually improved, especially when I made the drastic change in my eating lifestyle, lost weight permanently, and drastically changed my diet.  However, things did change for the worse.  Through a series of health related incidents, I was finally referred to a gastroenterologist in 2003.  This doctor was already a friend from my church and spent alot of time discussing my problem with me.  The disease had already progressed to a stage where at night while asleep I was already having episodes of choking and aspirating.  At one stage of treatment I was to have an experimental procedure to reduce the size of my esophagus using a foam-like substance.  However, due to other health issues, I developed a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lung).  Recovery from this complication lasted 6 months and delayed addressing the GERD issues.  In the years to follow I began to literally eat antacid tablets, especially before and after my running.  Stresses in life also took a toll, and soon, I was suffering almost 24/7 with burning in my esophagus.

Five years ago my doctor put me on Nexium, the famous purple pill.  After five years, I am still on a regimen of twice daily doses of Zegerid OTC.  I have tried various times to ween myself off of this regimen with no success.  My doctor (gastroenterologist friend) has tried many things short of surgery to aid my problem.  Yet, the omeprazole regimen is the best treatment so far.  That is, until I began to research natural treatment solutions for myself.  That's the next blog post.