Discouraged After Nissen . . .

I'm editing this post due to my original overly negative comments.

I read a thread posted quite some time ago which turned my thinking around a bit this morning after another bad episode of waking up in a panic with what felt like acid.

After reading the thread posted in my next comment below MMM's comment also below if you will look that thread over I think maybe several of us besides just me may be able to take something positive away from it.

Briefly it has to do with saliva pooling in the esophagus above the wrap and filling the esophagus overnight (in my case) when I'm not swallowing as much as I do in the daytime.

Residual food and saliva in the esophagus seem to possibly ferment and cause some of the symptoms I've had first due to esophageal stricture and then to NF and the tightness of the wrap keeping everything in my esophagus too long.

I have a super-abundance of saliva when I first wake up, am not sure all my food goes down with dinner the night before and I am already panicked about experiencing the same choking/drowning symptoms in the morning as I have for over 2 years now so the panic doesn't help anything.

Read the thread below on my post and see what you think.
Rita

Hi MMM,

I just read an earful at this link:
https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=45&m=1872742

and it makes my symptoms make a bit more sense now. Not sure if it's all my problem or even part of it but if you read all three pages of it it is most enlightening.

Here's what I posted there: Well, I wish I'd read this thread about 2 weeks ago. I think it's the most informative post-NF thread I've read and it seems to be exactly what I'm going through now.

I had several strictures in the last 8 years or so and the symptoms were pretty much as they are now post-NF in that it seems that the saliva collects in my esophagus just above the wrap site much as it did with the strictures which were very large.

I'm guessing that in my case the saliva that ferments overnight in my esophagus is greater than before the surgery and the sour taste makes me feel as if I have acid reflux again.

Like Rummaan said in his early posts about what his surgeon told him my heart beats fast first thing in the morning and that's what wakes me up and not the other way around.

I probably wouldn't have related to this post at all before surgery or the first week following surgery because I was so hopeful of an easy recovery beforehand and because I did so well the first week after surgery.

I'm not young at 64 and I don't think that's in my favor. I think my recovery whatever it turns out to be will be very slow. I'm just sitting here trying to figure out and process everything I've gleaned from this one very informative thread and it does give me hope about the saliva pooling.

As soon as I sit up in the morning after waking up I conjecture that the saliva is able to make its way down further to the wrap site and eventually through the wrap site. And I do have enough saliva to float a battleship.

I had the worst early-morning awakening with nausea, pain and a mouth full of saliva than I've had since the last stricture was stretched a couple of months ago.

Why? I think because I had too much "real people" food yesterday and last night. I had Chicken Lo Mein and steamed rice but it was just too much "for me" - too much. I also believe the possibility that not all of it went down through the wrap and that it may have laid in my esophagus all night and collected with the pooled saliva and made me really sick.

These are all guesses on my part and I'll be testing out this theory tonight in this manner: I'll eat correctly and eat earlier and then at bedtime set my clock to wake me about the same time or a little before my regular early-morning awakening by what feels like acid making my heart beat fast and making me sick at my stomach.

It can't hurt anything and it might just help.

It gets so easy to get discouraged when you've lived with GERD as many years as I have and at my age trying to recuperate from a surgery as strange as this one was and continues to be.

I'm also going to post this on the thread I just started that wasn't as positive as I'd like it to be. It's all true however and it is what it is.

Thanks for listening.

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As I said I"m not sure if the above is really what's happening to me but I'm going to try it out and see.

Rita