this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Achalasia. My esophagus does not squeeze food/liquid and it gets stuck in my esophagus. Since the nerves in the esophagus are dead (paraphrasing of course) this then causes the top stomach sphincter to not know food/liquid is coming and to open up. Instead, (pre-surgery) food/liquid piles up on top of the stomach and I would have to hope the sphincter would open up and let food in. I had times where I could not swallow water as it would just sit at the entrance waiting to be let in & would have to force myself to vomit as it started to hurt.
Post-surgery (heller myotomy with fundoplication) my esophagus is effectively a slip & slide and I rely on gravity to be able to get food down my esophagus and into my stomach. The top stomach sphincter has now been cut open and never closes anymore. They then stitch part of the top stomach lobe to the sphincter/ esophagus junction area to prevent stomach acid from backwashing.
Even if space travel for the masses occurred during my lifetime, I will never be able to go to space because I rely on gravity to get food to pass through my esophagus.
So you could say that because of gravity, youβre stuck on earth.
I see what you did there and I am disgusted to say I love you for it. :D
Wow that sounds heavy, first time I ever heard of it. At what age you got it diagnosed and treated?
First Dr visit was sometime in 2018 with surgery in Q2 2019'ish. I would have been 37'ish when symptoms first started coming on.
From what I've read, only 1 in 200,000 have it so it took multiple Dr's to finally find one who said to me, "I was just at a convention last month and heard a talk about a condition like yours and just happens one of the top Dr's on achalasia lives here in our city." Few months later and I was scheduled for surgery and it's been worlds better post-surgery. :)
It definitely affects my life every day with what I can & cannot eat (bread is a nightmare) but I take it in stride and drinks copius amounts of water with every meal.
I'm still impressed about it, especially learning it happened in your adulthood. Thanks for sharing!
How does that work for laying flat? If your stomach sphincter doesn't close, do you have issues with reflux coming back up if you lay flat/try to sleep too soon after eating, or does the backwash stop it enough that it doesn't matter your position? Either way, it sounds awful.
I do have to be cognitive of bending over after swallowing something because I can feel it trying to make it's way back up.
For about a year, I used a husband pillow behind my pillow so I would sleep upright. Eventually, I figured out what works best for my body which is basically just make sure I don't eat at least 2 hours before bed.
Other than that, the fundoplication takes care of preventing stomach contents from coming back. Here's a quick video!
https://www.mayoclinic.org/fundoplication/vid-20084708
Thanks for sharing. That's wild!
Don't be sad about it! You're the person who puts the fun in fundoplication!
Who wants to go to space if you're not there, right?
Do you know if it's possible to have some mild form of this? Me and my brother have been trying to work out our "digestive" issues for a few years with doctors with no success.
I can relate to the feeling of food/drink feeling like its "piling up" because sometimes I throw up last nights dinner when I'm brushing my tongue the next day.
It's something that's gotten worse as I've gotten older. I don't know if that plays into it.
Never hurts to get checked. See about having an enscopy performed and they can check it out. Another procedure is called a Esophageal Manometry. They put a thin tube up your nose and down your throat and make you swallow fluids to measure how well your esophagus squeezes or in my case, they said it spasmed and basically doesn't respond as it hood.
I wish you the best.
This was my first thought reading your comment. Have you considered the possibility that you are a bird?
Space travel for the masses would need artificial gravity, spinning rings to generate forces that mimic gravity. You'd be alright