One Year Later
Heart burn operation
April 2005
It's been a year now and I have to admit, it's been nice not having any heartburn. I still have a minor problem with the, "can't burp thing sometimes. It doesn't happen a lot. But if I don't chew my food well, or eat scratchy foods, such as toast, my les area gets agitated and I get this problem.
Chewing ones food well seems to help a lot. Besides the pieces of food being smaller, it also allows more moisture to mix with the food, so it goes down better, without agitating my les area. If I get the can't burp thing, like where it feels like a burp gets stuck in my throat, I may also get a case of the hiccups. I can usually get past this state by chewing a small amount of food up well and try swallowing it, or drink a glass of water slowly until it clears. Time will also cure the problem, but isn't always useful when one is trying to eat dinner.
Scratchy foods, like toast, deep fried foods, etc., seem to scratch my les area causing it to get agitated. I think this scratchy thing is part of my original problem. My les area doesn't seem to be protected quite like it should be, which is letting these scratchy type foods agitate my les area.
This seems to be mostly a minor problem, compared to the raw feeling I had in my les area before the operation. I can eat most anything. Before the operation, there where a lot of foods, I just didn't eat or, if I did eat, knew I'd be having a lot of heartburn. It's hard to break the habit of not eating some of these things. I'm still amazed when I eat something in this group and I don't have any heartburn.
During my recovery period, right after the operation, if asked, would I get the operation again, I'm not sure I would have answered yes, but now that all the recovery pain is gone, I have to answer yes. It's amazing how fast we can forget how bad the pain was. And everywhere I read about this operation on the internet, before the operation, everyone said it was worth it, even those that had a lot of complications. So, now I know what they meant.
So, all in all, if you are having serious problems with gerd, especially if your throat is raw, which could lead to more serious stuff, this operation may be right for you. I should also add that my recovery period was tougher then most of the others I read about on the internet. I'll also add, that the only way to really know about how the recovery will go is to experience it. Even though I read a lot and also saw two of the operations on the TV, I wasn't really prepared for the recovery period. The operations I saw on the TV left a lot of the operation out and the two people had a quick recovery period, which I did not. The operation is the easy part. The recovery could be the hard part. But recovering from cancer would be a lot worse.