is full symptom supression realistic for most of us?

Oftentimes when I worry about getting Barrett's or never getting better I often think its because I can't completely control my symptoms. Is full symptom control the realistic for someone with long-term GERD? In other words...barrett's doesn't often progress to cancer, but does your average person with Barrett's have full symptom control now? Or does your average GERD sufferer struggle as much as many of us here seem to?

Is it realistic to battle GERD for decades without full symptom suppression, or does everyone struggling with GERD have more or less consistent symptoms throughout their battle? Am I a normal GERD patient if I can't get symptoms under control, or am I an abnormal GERD patient?

As some of you know I am 28, so I wonder if my long-term experience with this is going to be one of feeling symptoms but still getting by...Personally, I have had GERD since the beginning of 2008, had full symptom suppression for 1.5 years but have been struggling since then with no end in sight. I have also been advised against the surgery for now, and would prefer somehow being able to avoid it myself...

Post Edited (theacidrefluxman) : 12/23/2011 4:46:23 PM (GMT-7)

Hey ARM,

This is a question I myself have been struggling with - am I ever actually going to be back to normal? The doctor who did my gastroscopy said he couldn't see that the surgery would fix anything (since all the anatomy was normal) but here I am, still suffering. My normal doc is e-mailing a GI to see what can be done, but I'm worried that this might be it.

I can't remember why, but why have you been steered away from the Nissen? Did your doc say he didn't think it would help?

I'm sorry that these thoughts are coming now. I myself am running quite low on optimism so I definitely understand.

Merry Christmas!
Ashley

I think we see a skewed representation of GERD here - all the people for whom medication is very successful are out there leading almost normal lives (the lucky things......) and not visiting us here on the forum. The forum users seems to be mostly made up of people who are headed for surgery, recovering from surgery, weighing up surgical options, or (like us) are not being put forward for surgery but medication isn't a 100% success.

And I do personally know one or two people who are on Omeprazole and have complete symptom resolution and no side effects. To all intents and purposes they lead normal lives - whether or not life long usage will catch up with them at some point is another question, but if I felt as well as them I wouldn't be worrying about it!!

MMM

I was diagnosed with GERD 20 years ago. i had endoscopy back then and put on Zantac for 6 months, i was healed and it never came back until now so i managed to stay away from it for many years so yes it's possible

With me, I spent 10 years starting from occasional tums to 80mg of nexium and 300mg of zantac.
I never got better, so I chosed the surgery. I'm very happy that I did the surgery. I was scared of it, but I felt like anything that would stop my constant coughing and gagging on reflux was worth the chance.