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About Me
I suffer from Achalasia and my symptoms are so different from classic Achalasia that specialists have seen only 2 or 3 people with my exact symptoms. The upper muscles in my esophagus are only slightly weaker than normal and my LES is spastic. My esophagus and stomach can be extremely spastic on occasion and I have to be extremely careful what I eat and drink. The purpose of this webpage is to see if anyone else out there has this same problem and if so, you can leave me email about it at KMA650@AOL.COM so we can discuss our misery and maybe come up with solutions or workarounds.
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My Stats
I'm a middle aged American, white, male, and of Irish heritage.
My work is usually high-stress and I'm trying to figure out healthy ways of dealing with the stress.
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My Interests
I pursue landscape photography as a release, unfortunately I can't devote 100% of my time to it as I work a day-job to pay the bills. Computers use to be a hobby but are less so nowdays...hence the "cheap" AOL webpage. I have just created a website for my photography, I'm still working out the kinks such as a good photographic printing service but the site is pretty much up at http://www.bertphoto.com/
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My Favorite Links
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Hi, my name is Bert O'Connor and I suffer from achalasia...
Its a long story but back in the 1980's I had bad acid reflux but after losing weight and changing my diet back then, the acid reflux went away; it reappeared only occasionally after eating certain foods but it was not a regular occurance.
The GERD I experienced (that led up to my present swallowing problems) was eventually controlled by my doctor prescribing Prevacid. I tried Prilosec but Prevacid worked best for me. Ironically a side effect of Prevacid sometime is stomach pains. The Prevacid eventually stopped the incredible but occasional chest pain I experienced.
It seems that I got a three-prong attack starting in Jan. of 1999.
1. I had a pain that occured just below my sternum, deep inside, that was like a hot poker being shoved in just below the sternum.
2. This pain triggered a spasm that went up my throat and sometimes all the way to my jaw.
3. Months after suffering from #1 and #2 above, I began to get stomach spasms.
The end result is that I would suffer this severe pain and throat/jaw spasm for approx. 45 minutes, sometimes twice a day.
It took me 1.5 years to figure out that if I drank sips of ice water it would alleviate and usually eliminate the pain in my stomach.
What I had to do to stop this pain was take my Prevacid religiously, every day.
Eliminate Soda Drinks, Orange juice, coffee, and importantly NO chocolate.
Fatty foods had to go, no bacon, no butter, no beef or pork.
But then I developed the swallowing problem partly due to my slowness in seeking medical help ... but also this swallowing problem can also be due to some pressures that life puts on us all as I've had several deaths in my family that came all at once and was a lot to handle on top of my health issues.
8/2/02
Since I posted the aforementioned information, much has changed in my life.
Since about February of 2002, I have gone to an all organic diet and have eliminated many many foods that caused me digestive problems. Here's my workaround:
My doctor has put me on Procardia, a vasodialator, which opens up veins/arteries within my body to get more blood flow to the LES (Lower Esophageal Sphincter) which is what is causing my swallowing problem. But Procardia was not enough to make the LES work when I wanted to eat a meal or drink fluids. So my doctor prescribed Xanax to help me relax. The end result is I take three Procardia and two Xanax a day and that helps a lot in my eating. But one other thing, I now have to eat hot soup with each meal...the heat helps my LES relax and acts as a lubricant. And yes, the soup is organic. What was significant was that I have found that my stomach is sensitive to additives that are in our foods and I have a sensitivity to MSG as well as other additives such as preservatives and pesticides and so forth. How can I prove this?
Simple. I cannot eat steak purchased at a regular grocery store, but I CAN eat steak that is organically grown, that means beef with no hormones, no MSG added (yes, they put MSG in uncooked meat so they can sell you a lower grade/cut of meat that "tastes" as good as a better grade of meat, and still charge you the rate for the higher cut of meat) no preservatives or pesticides. I further proved it to myself by alternating meals that had the regular meat and meals with the organic meat. EVERY time I ate the regular meat, my LES quit functioning after three swallows of the reg. meat, but every time I ate the organic meat, I could eat the whole piece of steak. Go figure.
12/10/02
For approx. a year I was unable to eat "regular" food from a grocery store, as you will se later, I found eating organic foods have helped me tremendously towards leading a more normal life. I turned a corner this past August when I started to be able to eat regular food again and fewer organic foods. Starting in June I had a major souce of stress removed from my work life and have made a somewhat miraculous improvement in that I can eat more regular foods. I still have swallowing problems but now I can see that stress is a MAJOR factor in my swallowing problems.
Whole Foods Grocery stores have been a Godsend for me. If they didn't exist, I don't know what I'd do.
I'm at the point now where I have to make a decision of whether or not to go through a medical procedure called "Heller's Myotomy" which is where a surgeon severs the LES at the top of my stomach rendering my LES non-functional forever; which means I'll pretty much be able to eat whatever I want as there will be no LES to constrict my ability to swallow solids or liquids. The only thing stopping me is getting up the courage to have it performed. The alternative that I'm living right now, sucks, to be honest. Think about it. I cannot travel further than where I can lug a cooler with my special foods and drinks. I'm a budding landscape photographer who wants to travel to the American West to make photos and how am I going to do that without somehow packing all my food to take with me? That's going to be a pain in the patoot to say the least. Last Fall, I drove 12 hours to North Carolina to take photos of waterfalls, and remember this was before my conversion to organic food, and I was unable to eat mostof the time I was there ... and it was also my 20th anniversary with my wife, so meals out were a disaster. The holiday season is coming up again and I can't see myself going through another Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's without being able to enjoy the foods that go along with those family celebrations.
9/17/04
Alot has happened since I wrote last. On 6/8/04 I had the Heller's Myotomy with Toupee Fundoplication performed on me at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. My life has changed for the better since the surgery, I would highly recommend it. Prior to the surgery the quality of my life was crap but now I can eat anything I want and drink anything I want except for soda pop and hard liquor, too hard on the stomach. My doctor was Dr.Hinder who has performed over 200 of these surgeries. I cannot impress upon you just how much better my life is now. I was told by the surgeon that he had never seen a tighter, thicker LES muscle than the one I had. I was told that because I had waited so long for the surgery that my esophagus had expanded to three times its normal diameter because of all the forced pushing I did to get food and drink into my stomach, if I had waited a few more years, I would've had to have part of my intestines used to replace my esophagus as my esophagus would've been so big that the surgery would've done nothing for me.
I have an important question to ask each and every one of you: At any time in your life did you have to use an inhaler for asthma or any other breathing problem? I use to years ago and I'm trying to find out if there is a correlation between my swallowing problem and my use of a inhalor for breathing problems I had during Spring.
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