| Feeling desperate/What's your experience?
This is going to be a long post but I have no idea what is going on with my health so I would like to hear back from you guys if you have experienced anything similar to me. Let me start off by saying I have had GERD since I was 12 years old, I'm now 19. I don't know if my current issue is connected to that but I still think it's an important piece of information. Now, the current problem I have is difficulty swallowing. It all started about 2-3 months ago, I started noticing in class that I felt like it was difficult to sallow my own saliva. I'd be sitting and feeling a pressure in my throat like if someone was grabbing on to it , I never felt out of breath, it was just uncomfortable. At first I thought maybe it had something to do with drinking coffee when I'm not supposed to since I have GERD. I gave up drinking coffee but that feeling didn't go away, it got worse. I slowly started to lose my ability to swallow food. It's hard to explain, I wasn't choking, it was just an uncomfortable feeling, it wasn't painful. It felt like I had forgotten how to swallow food, I just couldn't do it. Then one Saturday in November, things got really bad. I couldn't eat anything, I couldn't drink anything, I was staying up late at night spitting my saliva into a bucket because I couldn't swallow it. If I did force a swallow, it felt like the saliva was going up my nose. I saw the doctor on Wednesday, all she did was prescribe me some more acid reflux medication and that was the end of it. I got home still feeling awful and blew my nose, I looked at the tissue and saw blood. I wasn't blowing my nose often or hard enough for blood to come out so I panicked and went to the E.R. where I had a Barium swallow test. They told me I didn't have anything abnormal but they noticed that it did take liquids a little bit longer to go down and that it looked like some muscles were contracting while others were not which is something that apparently happens in some people. I was prescribed Dicyclomine and told to call my doctor so that I could be referred to a gi specialist or a neurologist. I did that but my doctor refused the referral, my mom had to come with me to beg to this doctor so that I could be referred to the gi specialist. My primary doctor thinks it's all in my head and when I asked her if I could have the Dicyclomine in liquid form she refused because according to her, the only thing that it does is relieve gas, although at the E.R. I was told it was to help with cramps or something like that and that it would help me with my difficulty swallowing. When I finally saw the gi specialist, she recommended that I drink hot water and said something about me probably having motility issues caused by irritation from the acid going up my esophagus. The only way she would send me to go get an endoscopy is if I tested positive for H. Pylori. About 2 weeks ago I went back to my primary doctor's office and a nurse came in and told me that my result for the H. Pylori test came back negative but that she really wanted me to have an endoscopy done she also mentioned one side of my tongue was thicker than the other (again I don't know if this is causing my problems?). So now I'm being referred to a ENT specialist and have to wait more. I'm still haing difficulty eating but I manage to get some food down. I don't know for how much longer I will have this and I don't know what's wrong with me. My primary doctor hasn't been helpful at all and makes me feel like this is all in my head.
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