Not sure I can take much more of this...

Hello.  I know that lump feeling too well.  Have they looked into your stomach? What is the medicine for that you are taking?  I have had 2 botox injections into my esophageal sphincter muscle.  I had a fundoplication procedure last year and have a ton of problems since.  Anyway, I cant say that the botox has helped in my situation.  However just having that muscle dialated has helped me out but its temporary.  There is medication they can give you that is supposed to help relax that muscle (its used for heart problems too).  Maybe that will help?

The PPI does not help my throat at all. I'm hoping that I only have acid reflux and not non-acid reflux as well. If my doctor proceeds with the botox and it doesn't work, I guess then next step would be cricopharyngeal myotomy.

I'm absolutely terrified of having to undergo fundoplication surgery, but this lump in my throat needs to go! Not sure if the surgery will help with that or not.

Right now I survive by popping peppermint candy all day long (for some reason it causes the muscle in my throat to relax). I am so sick of them! Unfortunately, eating also helps, so I keep gaining weight.

He said it might. With any "atypical" case, they will not come out and say that the chances of fundoplication helping are as high as they are with heartburn. They are going off of either personal experience or publications, and since most people studied who get fundoplications have heartburn, that is where most of the proof is.

I do not expect, and one shouldn't expect, that surgeons (who treat many other diseases besides heartburn), or even gastros or ENTs will be familiar with all the research out there on treatment for the various symptoms of reflux. For that reason, I have done my own research, and I have concluded that there is a very high chance that my symptoms will be helped. After all, fundo is known to decrease all types of reflux, and some of my reflux #s are very high even with a normal DeMeester score. PPI-responsive symptoms are another indication that fundoplication will help, and PPI definitely helped my throat. I do not know why in your case, a PPI does nothing for your throat, but to me that would make me wonder whether reflux was causing it.

True PPIs only decrease acidity and reflux still occurs. If there is reflux reaching your throat either way, and it doesn't matter how acidic it is, I'd do more investigation.

Here is a paper on fundo fixing globus.

[url]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18286301[/url]

Erica- If I chew peppermint gum, it does help, but I'm not supposed to be chewing gum. I have invisalign braces and it sometimes sticks to them and makes a huge mess. The weird part about the peppermint is that it is supposed to be bad for reflux but for some reason makes my throat feel a lot better.

I wish that I could just go to my doctor and demand a cricopharyngeal myotomy to fix this! I think it might eventually get to that point.

MMM- Do you mean that you feel the regurgitation? I have that sometimes, usually if I eat too much or drink water too fast. It comes all the way up to my throat and I can feel my UES trying to stop it. The pressure is uncomfortable and usually causes me to burp. Fortunately I've never had reflux come all the way up to my mouth.

I do wonder if the occasional regurgitation has caused my UES to tense up as a compensatory response. If that is the case, I would think that fundoplication would help if it was able to stop the reflux.

I have a question about PPIs. My GI and ENT seem to think that PPIs should stop regurgitation. Oddly, I never experience regurgitation until I started taking PPIs. My GI doctor was very confused by this. He said that the PPI should stop regurgitation. I think the reason why the ENT won't do the botox injection if I have non-acid reflux is because he is concerned that the reflux will go up to my mouth. He told me that PPIs work for acid reflux, but not non-acid reflux. Based on this information, it would seem that he is not worried about regurgitation if I only have acid reflux because the PPIs should stop the regurgitation. However, a lot of reading I have done indicates that PPIs do not stop reflux; they only remove the acid. Is this the case? Or are the PPIs supposed to stop reflux from happening in the first place? If PPIs don't stop reflux, doesn't that mean that everyone successfully treated for acid reflux with PPIs then has non-acid reflux?

Joy- That's what I thought, but I don't understand why both of my doctors seem to think that PPIs stop reflux! I guess there is no convincing them.

I'm hoping my pH test shows acid reflux so I can get this botox injection. I'm thinking it's likely that the test will show that, since I will have been off of Dexilant for 7 days beforehand, which I have been taking for over 6 months now. Guess I better prepare myself for the rebound. I don't get heartburn, even without the PPIs, so maybe it won't be so bad.

Even if my doctors are hesitant about surgery, can I insist on a referral to a surgeon? I really don't want to go doctor shopping just to get the referral. (This is if the botox fails or I have non-acid reflux.)