Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! It’s a new day in America. And everywhere else. Happy Easter to one and all.
Feeling particularly bright this morning because for the first time since last June’s miserable surgery, I woke up without a bellyache and without a lump in the throat. And though the 3 a.m. alarm clock went off as usual, it was not to wake me up to enjoy another wee-hours bout of heartburn. 🙂
To what do I attribute this miraculous turn of events? To a little help from my friends…
Not those friends, but their prescription cousins.
I’ve been gulping horsepills of omeprazole in double the OTC dose. That seemed not to be working, but apparently because I was knocking off them too soon.
As you know, I have a moral objection to being put on prescription drugs for the rest of my life, which of course is what every doctor you run into has in mind. So as soon as the symptoms would fade, I would fade off the omeprazole.
The other day, Young Dr. Kildare explained why this doesn’t work: The symptoms of gastric reflux stem from something like a burn to your esophagus, resulting from acid bubbling up where it’s not supposed to be. If you burned your hand, you could apply a topical treatment and it would feel better, but it wouldn’t be healed. You’d have to wait until it actually was healed to stop using the painkiller and before you could bang around again. Ditto, your innards.
He said you need to take prescription-strength omeprazole (or something like it) for about three months, even after the discomfort abates, and then, once you think the damage is healed, taper off it by going to the OTC pills for a week or two.
The new quacklet at the Mayo (oh, these young things! How can you have acquired an MD, gone through an internship and a residency, and look like you’re 19 years old???) agreed, although her time frame was shorter: eight weeks.
YDK has GERD himself, and also he’s not a kid (even though he looks mighty young to the aged eye), so I figure he’s probably the one to listen to. He having been around the block a time or two…
So I’ve been swallowing omeprazole religiously for about a week or ten days.
Then I discovered Zantac, OTC. This stuff, which in the past has done nothing for me, seems to work to beat back an acute attack, but only when used in combination with omeprazole. It dawned on me that if it worked during the day, it probably would work at three in the morning. So I put a pill and a glass of water by the bed, and night before last when I woke up with the familiar tingling/burning sensation that results from rolling over on my right side in my sleep, dropped the Zantac.
Took about 20 minutes to work, but it did work. And the next morning I wasn’t very sick. Somewhat so, but not to the usual extent.
I haven’t had a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, a glass of wine, a bourbon and water, a salad, a still-crisp vegetable, or so much as a whiff of chili pepper in weeks. So I can assure you, depriving yourself of the things you love doesn’t help. Neither do the various folks and quack remedies. No, swallowing organic apple cider vinegar does not help. Neither does ginger. Neither do Gaviscon, Rolaids, Mylanta, or Maalox.
In the nondrug department, only one thing seems to calm the symptoms of GERD: vanilla ice cream.
Yes. I don’t even LIKE ice cream, but I’ve been living on it for weeks.
The other day I reflected on the reason for this, ad it occurred to me it’s probably because ice cream is essentially a liquid. Effectively I’ve put myself on a liquid diet.
So I decided to branch out to other fluids.
Those soups that come in boxes all taste terrible to me: they taste like their cardboard containers. However, they’re less oversalted than the Campbell’s varieties. And no, I do not feel like making soup just now. Ugh. So I bought some chicken broth, some lamb broth, some mushroom soup, and some pumpkin soup. They all taste the same: cardboard. But they don’t seem to cause direct pain. Probably today I should go over to Trader’s on the way home from the churchly frenzy and pick up some chicken that I can make into real soup. Chicken à blanc…hold the onions. {sigh} Onion: that’s another beloved food item I haven’t had in weeks.
I’m wondering if a puréed lentil or bean soup might work…again, I can’t imagine how these would taste without onion. But WTF? It’s probably better than living on ice cream.
Yesterday I baked an Idaho potato. Served it up with some yogurt, figuring that would add some protein. A whole potato was too much to eat, but it seems to have worked to fill the belly without causing undue discomfort. Dined on this around 2:30 in the afternoon and wasn’t hungry till I got back from last night’s Great Vigil frenzy, along about 9:30 at night.
And this morning, trying to imagine what is essentially liquid and also edible, I recalled that my mother used to eat apple sauce when she didn’t feel well. I personally am not crazy about the apple sauce that comes in jars. However…quite a few apples are laying around the kitchen, waiting to spoil because I can’t eat them. Why not bake an apple?
That worked pretty well. I’m now not hungry and not in pain. Interesting.
So what am I gonna do this evening, when I have to go out for an Easter feast with friends? I certainly can’t eat any feasty foods. It’s going to look mighty funny when I ask for a bowl of soup for dinner. No clue how to cope with that. Guess I’ll have to play it as it lays.
How to Bake an Apple
You need:
• 1 apple, variety seems inconsequential
• butter
• brown sugar, turbinado sugar, or whatever sugar you have in the house
• cinnamon, if you have some
• pecans or walnuts, if desired
• hot water
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
With a paring knife, cut off the stem and a cone of apple around the it. Loosen the apple flesh by carefully slicing around the outside of the core. Take the handle of a metal spoon and scoop out the core and seeds.
Fill the hole with butter. Push in some pecans or walnuts, if you like. Top with sugar. Sprinkle a little cinnamon over it, if you wish.
Place the apple in a shallow baking dish. Pour in a little hot water, about a half-inch up the side of the pan.
Bake for 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how soft you like your apple. If you like it a little firm, take it out of the oven after about a half-hour. If you want apple sauce, baking for an hour will do the trick.
Very tasty! A heckuva lot better than canned apple sauce!
Oatmeal, without butter or cream, is also very good for an irritated stomach. Think of the oatmeal paste which helps with chicken pox or poison oak; maybe helps inside for similar reasons. And remember the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, and (dry) toast.
Sadly, I speak as one who knows what you’re going through. Doctor has me on alternating two-week stretches of Prilosec and Famotadine – indefinitely
Yeah, I found that oatmeal was not at all irritating. It’s a little heavy for me…I end up feeling like I have a lead ball in my stomach! Dry toast seems to irritate. Bananas: unclear…sometimes yes, sometimes no. The cooked apples (i.e., applesauce in an apple-skin package!) worked well — no aggravation. Rice? Again, sometimes it seems to irritate and sometimes the same bland stuff seems fine…not clear why.
I’m with ya on the Doc’s being overly dependent on writing prescriptions. DW has this problem with her….Quack….I mean Doc….It seems it’s easier for her to write script then to diagnose a problem. The problem is, some of these meds are pricey and offer little or no relief. My problem is with Doc’s that are a bit too aggressive. I went to my new eye Doc and during the exam she asked a bit about my folks history. I shared that my Mom has glaucoma which is controlled well with eye drops. She suggested that I have a “field test” even though my eye pressure was fine and I had no symptoms. So as I depart the gal at the desk sets me up for this test. I was a bit hesitant as there were no symptoms and inquired as to the costs. The gal at the desk says the test is pretty simple and goes for $30-40. So I decide to go for the test….and 3 weeks later get a report that was a very poor copy that looks like someone’s middle schooler scribbled out. And the remarks/findings are ….”inconclusive” no other data…..and a follow up appointment for July is suggested. And the costs?….after insurance $100….Hmmmm….I smell a money grab….I placed a call when I got the bill and a less than enthusiastic billing department rep could offer no explanation for the costs or the $25 “seating fee”. But did promise to have Doc review my case…. As for your GERD, DW gets it from time to time and it seems bananas do help BUT they need to be on the green side. I know it sounds crazy but it seems to work for her. MAN…. no coffee….I couldn’t do it.
Yah, I do crave my coffee. And my boozie-poos. 😉
Seriously, it takes about three days to shake the caffeine and the wine habits. Then you don’t miss it. I suspect it’s probably good to go off these substances for a period every now and then, if for no other reason than to get out of the rut.
As for the tendency of seemingly every doc in the country to want to put you on some drug for the rest of your life, check out this report from Pro Publica: https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/
This is something I want to blog about…so here’s a coming attraction. 🙂 Drops your jaw.
Meanwhile, I went out to dinner with friends last night at one of the nicer restaurants in town. The “milkshake” concoction that I’d had at a greasy spoon with some other friends at lunchtime was still sitting on my stomach like a concrete ball, and I didn’t know how on earth I was going to be able to eat anything. But couldn’t turn down one of the incredible offerings. Had scallops, creamy lemon-flavored risotto with peas, asparagus…num! And a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, the first alcoholic anything I’ve had in over a month. And a little custardy dessert thing.
This morning I feel GREAT. No pain, no urping, no burping. The omeprazole must have kicked in.
After the ice cream regimen, I’m now eight pounds overweight.
You know, I’ve had field tests by ophthalmologists…I don’t recall ever being charged a hundred bucks for the privilege. One guy jumped me through all sorts of hoops and I didn’t end up paying much of anything. Medicare must have paid for it. I suspect an awful lot of unnecessary testing is done, mostly because unscrupulous doctors (or those who need to pay the hired help) know they can talk people into it.
Happy to have provided the milkshake. Now you need to start making them at home, I guess — maybe with organic Costco milk and frozen yogurt instead of ice cream, so they won’t be so heavy?
Weirdly, I detest milk — it makes me barf — and I can take ice cream or leave. Mixing ice cream into milk is the only thing that makes it tolerable.
I’ve been using Talenti’s vanilla or coconut ice cream, which is pretty nice stuff. Plus whatever milk is at hand at Sprouts.
Well….I just got off the phone with the “office manager” and she seemed perplexed and concerned about the fact that no one called me AND that I received copy of a report with very little usable information and that it took over 3 weeks to get the results. She was going to look into it with the techs….one would think that they would have all this info in front of them when the office manager called. I tried to be as kind as I could but MAN… My suspicion? That for what ever reason my testing results were lost and did not pan out. So they just billed me for the “bad test” and scheduled a new test to cover their “arse”. Gosh I hope I’m wrong….As for the eight pounds gained from ice cream….I share your pain…..Ice cream makes everything better! Looking forward to the article on Doctors prescribing un-needed prescriptions…..
Well, you can’t prove that’s what they did…I suppose. It’s pretty strange. I sure wouldn’t go back to that quack again.
You know, a good optometrist can test for glaucoma, and they sure don’t charge what an ophthalmologist (M.D.) charges. You might try going to a small (not a chain) optical dispenser and asking if they can refer you to the best optometrist they know. Also, Angie’s List is now reviewing medical professionals…they’re no longer especially objective, but it’s better than no leads at all.
There’s a site called HealthGrades that supposedly collates patient reviews of doctors: healthgrades.com. The information there is pretty minimalist. Medicare is usually better: https://www.medicare.gov/physiciancompare/search.html But their “new! improved!” search engine doesn’t seem to work well. You may have better luck than I’m having with it just now.