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Sensation of something stuck in throat

To start with, I'm thirty years old, female, asthma sufferer and with any number of allergies.  Acid reflux issues are also nothing new to me.  They have popped up around every other year or so since I was around fourteen.  I get stressed easily.

This past fall I started coughing.  When ragweed gets released into the air, it goes straight to my lungs and causes asthma symptoms rather than causing just the allergic rhinitis I get with most of my other allergens.  Consequently it is one of my worst times of the year.   However, this year it was much, much worse than usual.  My asthma is normally mild, but this turned to moderate...and persistent!

A month later I developed bronchitis, around Thanksgiving.  I had no money for a doctor's copay so I struggled thorugh it as best I could.  It took three weeks for most of the symptoms to disperse and seven weeks for the cough to mostly go away.  My cough was gone for about a week.  Then I was struck with bronchitis again, and within a matter of days not only coughed till I nearly turned blue frequently, a massive pain in my sinuses told me that I was headed for big trouble.  I scrounged up the copay money somehow and saw the doctor, and was diagnosed with both bronchitis and a sinus infection, and was put on an sulfate antibiotic, codeine, and a week's worth of advair to quell what he described as asthmatic lung spasms brought on by the bronchitis.

The worst of the cough and the sinus infection faded over time with the medicines, but the cough never went away completely.  For me to have a cough for months after an illness isn't unusual, but this felt...wrong.  Even with antibiotics it felt wrong.  Then I started to feel a burning sensation behind my sternum, and my throat kept feeling raw and sore, and the feeling of soreness spread across my back and chest.  These, again, I'd felt before, although not for a couple of years.  It was stomach acid.

Usually taking something like Tums for a week gets rid of it, but when this failed to make much improvement this time, I found a store-brand version of Prilosec--Omeprazole, a fourteen-day course.  After a few days on it, most of the pain, the raw feeling in the throat, etc virtually completely disappeared.

Then one morning, a week ago, I woke up feeling like something was stuck in my throat.    I couldn't figure it out, and eating a meal at work caused me to regurgitate pieces of food back up to my throat when I'd have burped up gas.  I could feel the acid again.  Making myself vomit (once) did nothing, so I felt sure nothing was stuck. The feeling of something trapped there persisted, although the intensity of it has come and gone since that day.  I haven't had the feeling of food escaping back up my esophagus since the second day, but I keep feeling like something is caught in there.  I have no problems swallowing food, hard or soft, or liquids, or breathing.  Nothing feels obstructed, yet something feels stuck.  I should also mention that I still have a large amount of postnasal drip; it is something I often have because daily antihistamines I take are only partially effective.  I won't have to blow my nose after taking them but I have huge loads of that mucus going down my throat.

Is there any advice for this?  I do plan to see a doctor soon; I think this is related to GERD (from all my research it does seem so) but I'm terrified of the big C.  Anxiety and depression might also be a problem here, because I haven't had a particularly strong will to live lately--but that's another issue for another time.  (I will be mentioning that to the doctor as well, if I can get over my selfconsciousness enough to make myself do it.)

As an afterthought, that cough that was bothering me and hanging on with such persistence?  Also almost entirely disappeared after 24 hours on Omeprazole, so it appears that stomach acid issues were irritating my asthma  as well.


This discussion is related to feeling of lump in throat.
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Avatar universal
I'm not an expert by any means, but I think anxiety and or depression could potentially be the culprit.  About a year ago, I started feeling like I had a lump in my throat.  Some times it was worse than others but never really seemed to go away.  After a couple of weeks of a lump, I started having a little difficultly swallowing.  I have a thyroid condition and after doing some research my symptoms sounded exactly like the possibility of my thyroid having enlarged and pushing on my windpipe.  My doctor did an ultrasound of my thyroid and it was smaller than it was the time before they scanned it.  So there was no way that was what was causing my lump.  She advised it was a potential symptom of anxiety and put me on prozac.  3 weeks after I started the prozac, the lump and swallowing difficulty were gone.  Anxiety symptoms can mimic anything.  
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Avatar universal
I have read your situation trying to find one that is close to mine. I had diverticulitis in Aug. 2010. It was really bad and I suffered until December of 2011 with it only to have surgery and they found that my ovary and tube had adhered during the flare up and had to also be removed. I am recovering from that, and because of all the uncertainty, I ended up on depression medicine for the first time in my life. I now have digestion problems. Not sure if it is my stomach, gallbladder or pancreatitis. The doctor seems to think it is stomach related and has me scheduled for an endoscopy in March. I am not looking forward to it one bit. I have lost a ton of weight and even though I'm eating, I can't put any weight back on. The lump....yeah, I have a lump in my throat that feels like a lump of bread is stuck and won't go down. It does not hurt and I can swallow food or liquids just fine, but why is it there? How have things turned out with you?
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Avatar universal
To update....my condition turned out to be "Globus", a symptom of acid reflux disease.  I'm glad it wasn't cancer.

But semi-related, gathering whatever courage I had and admitting to my doctor my depression issues, I'm now taking an antidepressant for the next six months.  In the meantime, the feeling my throat has decreased in intensity, although it isn't fully gone yet.  I'm also to take Omeprazole for two more weeks after I fully finish this two-week run.
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Avatar universal
some stay on prilosec forever
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Avatar universal
i think yhou have a hiatus hernia
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Avatar universal
Whoops, I guess in my hurry I missed part of it.....I had bronchitis in OCTOBER, early on, and then again in late November.  I realized upon reading it I wasn't clear about that, and I can't seem to edit my post.
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