epigastric pain with GERD

For those of you diagnosed with GERD do you have epigastric pain/tenderness too? I believe that is pain or tenderness at the base of your sternum. I have confirmed GERD and I do have tenderness at the base of my sternum and I'm trying to figure out if my GERD is causing that or if it's being caused by something else. I can't tell by anatomy pictures if that's where the top of the stomach is or if that's too low.

Oh they aren't new, I've had the same tenderness for as long as I've had stomach/GERD problems so I'm sure they are somehow related. Every time I go to the gastro doc they do the same poking and prodding and go "are you tender here" and I say "yes" but I never asked if that was caused from GERD.

I have my manometry tomorrow...I'm soo excited!!! Not. Maybe I'll sneak that question in and see if they'll answer it. Sometimes they avoid those non test related questions because they don't want to give out medical advice.

Apparently I have grown accustomed to unpleasant testing from other things because the manometry was pretty straight forward. I had one 5 years ago and it was much more traumatic and they couldn't get the tube down etc etc. Today I literally swallowed the tube down myself and off we went with the test, it wasn't that big of a deal. The guy running it said that my lower muscle function (I can't remember the fancy word) looked normal and that my the upper part of my esophagus looked normal too but that once in a while is spasmed after I swallowed. Beats me...I couldn't tell. So I guess that is that...off to the surgeon in Jan for the full report.

I recently woke up with a mini-esophageal (spelling?) spasm. I have had a virus that I think moved into my gastro area. It started in my head and I had chills etc.