Can anyone help? Tight feeling in esophagus...hard to swallow bread!

Hi, I am new here. I am a 38 year old female and I need some help! Here's my story...

about six weeks ago, I woke up one morning and was short of breath. This continued throughout the day. The next day my shortness of breath eased and was replaced with chest pains on the left side which I was worried about as I thought I was having a heart attack. I decided not to go to the ER as the chest pains moved to the right...at that point I thought maybe I was low in iron or something and throughout that week I took an iron supplement. Each time I took it I felt a little burn in my throat but nothing major. Then on the friday night I thught maybe I just needed to relax so I had a sip of wine which made my eSophagus burn badly! After a week I began to have trouble swallowing. I could only eat soft bland foods or else I was in pain. I felt always like I had something stuck where the esophagus meets the stomach (sorry this is so long!). Anyway, after worrying myself senseless which made the pain worse, and losing too much weight from barely eating, I went to see a GI specialist for an endoscopy. This was about three weeks afterwards. He saw no inflammation at all, no ulcers, no narrowing etc etc. He put me on 40mg a day of pantaprozol and said he wasn't sure exactly the problem but to try this for a few weeks see if it helps. Well it did help to some extent but then I started to feel really nauseous and got buzzing in my ears. I am assuming this is form the Ppi. So yesterday I dropped to 20 mg. today I feel the pulling tight feeling again where my esophagus meets my stomach. I can eat ok, but bread feels difficult to get through into my stomach as does bulkier foods like pasta. I want to come off the PPI because I don't like the side effects and am not really into taking a drug every day when I don't even know what the problem is! Also, I have never suffered heartburn in my life.

Anyway, can anyone offer any advice or does anyone have a similar story and has found the cause of the problem and a miraculous cure? :) I am a mum to two young kids and I am fed up being preoccupied with this nuisance. I am wondering if I have a motility disorder or a hitius hernia? The only other thing to note is that my thyroid is a little out of whack which showed on the blood test results. I was negative for hpylori and also had a chest x ray which showed nothing wrong....
Thanks for any help and so sorry this is so long!!

I had the same problem and it turned out to be a schatzki's ring. The gastroenterologist did not find it on the endoscopy, they found it on a barium swallow exam. Look up schatzki's ring and see if your symptoms correlate.

The symptoms just started happening out of nowhere one day. I dealt with the problem for years until they finally found out what it was. I had mine dilated and was fine afterwards.

Thanks. Yes I have completely changed my diet and sleep on an incline. I am having a better day on my reduced dosage of 20mg. I am hoping to wean off the PPIs and be rid of the side effects. Then I am going back to my GI for a barium swallow. Thanks for the advice all.

Hi Faniflana - What are the symptoms of your esophageal spasms ? I am reading some stuff and it seems there are folks who get attacks and are under lot of pain. My barium swallow came back and said that I had esophageal spasms. But I don't get an attack. My throat feel tired. When I swallow it sometimes feel that something is stuck there and I can feel the liquid go down slowly. Eating food surprisingly is OK. What kind do you have ?

Thanks.