I'm posting here as something of a last resort. In short: my throat just isn't getting better. Please help! I need some positive reinforcement, and when I'm better I promise I'll pay it back and post my success story here!
I'm a 33 year old male, and I was diagnosed with GERD 2 years ago when I would get noticeable chest pain and acid gurgling up after triggers like alcohol, spicy food, and orange juice, although a gastroscopy as far back as 2009 found scarring of the oesophagus. Until last year, I took the doctor's GERD diet as more of a guideline than a hard and fast law, although I pretty much stopped drinking alcohol and coffee most of the time.
Last year, in May 2013, after a couple of weeks of my throat burning and not realizing that I was causing progressive damage, I must have caused a serious burn to my throat because even drinking water was agonizing. I got on Nexium 40mg twice a day for a few days, but stopped that and just followed the GERD diet very, very strictly for 3 weeks. And then I was healed.
I went back to my normal diet, except I cut out the main triggers: zero alcohol, zero coffee, zero orange juice, etc. But by October, I remember visiting Berlin, and I was bold enough to eat Indian food and drink a cup of coffee (with some Rennies on hand.)
By New Years 2014, I had a tremendous relapse. Agonizing throat burning and terrible acid. I blame Flomax, which I was trialing for chronic prostatitis for 2 weeks before my throat took a huge turn for the worse.
Flash forward to today, March 23, almost 3 months later. I've been on an absolutely bland diet for 3 months. I've been on 20mg Omeprazole twice daily for about 2 months, and for more than a month have taken 40mg Famotidine, an H2 blocker, before bed. For the last 10 days I've been ALSO taking Gaviscon after every meal, up to 4 times a day. And I suck on plenty of Rennies, as well as Lemocin and even a prescription throat pain killer. Nothing really helps. I don't eat for at least 5 hours before bed. I've raised my bed head several inches. I've lost 10 kilograms, and am now 84kg (at 174 cm, that's not bad.)
The problem is that my throat simply isn't getting any better. Now I should say that I'm not getting any serious acid anymore, because my diet is extremely simple. But it just ain't improving, no matter what I do.
In case you're wondering, a typical day's eating will consist of fried eggs with virtually no oil in the morning with 2 cucumbers and some wheat crisps consisting exclusively of wheat, water and salt. I may drink fresh carrot juice, or carrot and beetroot juice, or carrot and red apple juice. I may also have some 1.5% yoghurt and a glass of rice milk or hazelnut milk. All very low fat.
Lunch and dinner might be a chicken breast with 2 cucumbers and more wheat crisps. Or a salmon sushi combination consisting of raw salmon, rice, avocado, carrot and cucumber, and of course a little seaweed.
Nobody could accuse me of indulging. My friends think I'm some sort of monk. No alcohol. No coffee. And that'll remain pretty much for the rest of my life, it appears.
Now none of this really triggers acid, and indeed my throat calms down while I'm eating or drinking. But perhaps half an hour or an hour later, my throat feels like I'm breathing fire, and it hurts a little to swallow. The family doctor and ENT have seen my throat and they say it's quite red.
But none of my doctors, including the gastro, seems to think this is much of an emergency. I have a gastroscopy scheduled for about 7 weeks from now, and they'll be doing a pH monitor and oesophagus motility test in the next few weeks. I expect that the gastroscopy will probably show what it showed last year - minor scarring of the lower oesophagus - and I'm trying to get the scope done a bit earlier but I don't feel it's all that pressing.
My guess is that my throat simply isn't recovering from the initial burn it got back in early January. I know exactly how I'm going to behave once it heals: I'm going to stay on omeprazole indefinitely, I'm going to keep my bed raised, I'm not going to eat late at night, and I'm going to keep a simple diet.
But how do I get this damn throat to heal? What am I doing wrong? Surely someone else has experienced this?
Would love to hear from you all!