help needed

[JamieHerr]

i felt like i was having a heart attack...my chest was hurting...this woke me up in the middle of the nite..this continued for three nites in a row...with the feeling of heart burn, stomach gurgling, gas,...after not sleeping for three days i went to the dr on friday...he gave me a script of zantac 300mg...also, reglan 10mg...along with that i eat pepto and drink mylanta...friday nite hardly any symptoms, saturday nite no symptoms, sunday stomach bloated all day, along with the gurgling of an upset stomach, along with heartburn...needless to say, i didnt sleep much sunday nite...today(monday) the same situation...although it is much worse when i lay down at nite....
my question is, how long is this going to last, before i start getting better?.....is there something else i should get checked out....he did a bacteria test for h pyloria that was negative...are the meds im taking the right ones????.....any advice would be appreciated.....

Jamie

[CalGal]

Your doc is basically treating you for acid problems, so if that is what the problem is, it may not change until you can tamp down your acid production and stabilize things. You may want to consider looking into a GERD diet to help things along. Some foods can result in the production of more acid than others, so trying to change things via food changes might help. You can find representative examples at www.gicare.com.

Zantac works on a day-to-day basis. If that med doesn't help, you may have to change to a proton pump inhibitor med, but they take up to 14 days to reach full effectiveness. It would be good if you could get off of the reglan as soon as you can IMO. It can really have some undesirable side-effects, so changing your diet, taking the meds and making lifestyle changes to try to lessen the effect of the acid will help a lot.

Any medication you take to reduce acid will change your bowel habits and may also produce gas. They're unfortunate side-effects of trying to control the damage that can be done with/by excess acid.