My Stay-cation in Anchorage, Part Two. The Diagnosis

(I had some cute clip art in the draft    form but there's no such thing as free anymore. Hence, the unusual spacing.)  

About three years ago, I leaned across my dining table to reach something and a searing pain cut across my midriff.

Well, I thought, that’s a weird place for a cramp.  

(IMAGINE CLIP ART OF STOMACH PAIN.)

It happened again a few times, always when bending over.  The fact that it was horizontal pain and obviously not muscular intrigued me. 

 

When my annual Medicare wellness exam arrived, I mentioned it off-handedly to my doctor.   She expressed concern but we went no farther  as she is limited as to what is covered in the Medicare wellness protocol.

And that’s when a series of frustrating events began which served only to reinforce my aversion of doctors and hospitals.

My primary care doctor, whom I trust and admire because she puts up with my nonsense, is in a large clinic that accepts Medicare patients.   Physicians that accept Medicare patients are rather hard to find in Anchorage.

I tried to get another appointment with my doctor, but the earliest date was too many months in advance , so I took a date and time with another doctor in the clinic.  This time it was with an Asian doctor whom I’d seen before.  Unfortunately, between his accent and my hearing loss, I simply cannot understand him.

He sent me off for an X-Ray.   Later, his interpretation of it noted “large hiatal hernia.”   Big deal, I thought.   Lots of people have hiatal hernias, wherein the stomach begins to protrude through the hiatal opening in the diaphragm.  It was the “large” that I should have paid attention to.   I just thought my stomach was over-achieving.

A third doctor got involved and focused on a slight anomaly in my heart and she pestered me mercilessly until I submitted to an echocardiogram, which showed inconclusive results.

(IMAGINE CLIP OF OF MULTIPLE DOCTORS HERE)

After a couple months of all the doctors and aides going in different directions, I was pissed off and ignored them all.    There were too many different doctors involved.   Now, that is the mission of that clinic—that a patients can always get medical attention from one of the many doctors.   Nice principle, but in practice it is baffling to the patient.

The next spring, I began my 17th year of picking up litter along 40 miles of the Seward Highway and what a concerning wake-up call that was!   I got out of breath easily and frequently had a horrific pain near the bottom  of my rib cage on the left side--an incapacitating pain.   I had to sit down and relax for a while before it went away.

(IMAGINE CLIP ART OF BACK PAIN.)

 

I have a vivid memory of struggling to reach the end of one day’s route, holding my breath, all abdominal muscles clenched against the pain, and barely making it.  What’s more is that the distance I could clean daily was a fraction of what it should have been.  

Little by little, I realized that two things brought on that pain:   overeating and tightening my abdominal muscles.  As for over-eating:   guilty, guilty, guilty.   The thing is, I never knew how much or how little that amount would be.

I ate much less than usual, as friends can verify, but the pains still came.

Then, my annual wellness exam rolled around again and after further discussion with my primary doctor, I agreed to see a gastroenterologist.  

In his office, I described all my symptoms (including how I could make the pain vanish) and handed him a sheaf of test results.   He leafed through them as he considered my symptoms, and said, “AHA!   You have a large hiatal hernia.”

That, he continued, explained all my symptoms, the pains, the shortness of breath, the elevated red blood cell count, and maybe that slight thing with my heart.   He did not put any emphasis on the LARGE, so I continued to think of it as an over-achieving stomach.

“You need surgery,” he said.   I told him all my reservations—possible cognitive decline after anesthesia, a weird reaction after a colonoscopy that had me going to the hospital for a CT scan, and NO confidence-inducing hospital experiences.   Quite the opposite, in fact.

(IMAGINE CLIP ART OF SURGERY SCENE)

And right then I dug in my heels and they remained dug in for two more years.

 

(IMAGINE CLIP ART OF STUBBORN WOMAN) 

My Stay-cation in Anchorage, The Lead Up

For Spring Break this year, I opted for a week in Anchorage.   A stay-cation, rather than a vacation, if you will.

Borrowed this photo from the Internet.

 

No islands in the Caribbean with tropical breezes and sharks slipping through the clear waters, no vast  savannahs with African birds of every color and prowling  big cat predators,  no penguins of the Southern Ocean surrounded by their pink poo, where hurricane-force winds rage.   No scenic views, either because my view would be the rooftops of various hospital buildings.

Instead, I chose—somewhat involuntarily—the city where I grew up, graduated high school, and worked in several professions.   No single career choice for me, either.  I began in print journalism, then radio, then as a legal secretary.   I doffed it all to be a breakfast cook at a ski resort 35 miles from Anchorage, where I felt more at home surrounded by mountains and forests and black bears.

Some people think I’ve had a varied career;   I think I had a short attention span.

I went on to many other jobs, but that’s a story for another occasion.   I've gone astray.  Today we’re talking about my Stay-cation in Anchorage.

Up in the second paragraph, I mentioned it was “somewhat involuntary.”  Put the emphasis on involuntary.  I would never have done this t had it not been necessary

I’ll tell you about it because I want it to serve as warning for the rest of you who have similar symptoms, like when you think you have heartburn and sit around patting your chest with your fist.

I dealt with GERD, for decades, a condition in which stomach acid bubbles up into the esophagus.   The esophagus becomes very unhappy and lets you know about it.

 

Google provides a better description:  

This is a chronic disease that occurs when stomach acid or bile flows into the food pipe [esophagus] and irritates the lining. Acid reflux and heartburn more than twice a week may indicate GERD.

Symptoms include burning pain in the chest that usually occurs after eating and worsens when lying down.

 

Relief from lifestyle changes and over-the-counter medications is usually temporary. Stronger medication may be needed.

This is a video.   Click one the YouTube link after you skip the ad.

Pay attention especially to the last part where it describes hiatal hernia.

 

Always the contrarian, my GERD pain transmitted  to my spinal area and was so strong that when it first began occurring, I thought I was having a heart attack.   It was scary. Little did I know then what scary could be.

 

Left untreated, the stomach acid can erode the lining of the esophagus, leading to a pre-cancerous condition called Barrett’s Esophagus.  That got my attention. 

 

I detected (don’t you love self-diagnosis?) that it happened when I overate. I bought Costco-sized bottles of Tums and tried not to overeat.  “Overeating” can be as drastic as eating a huge juicy steak with all the trimmings, or as simple as half of a Costco hot dog.   It varies.

 

So, the Tums accompanied me for a couple decades wherever I went and then one day in Anchorage, things turned ominous. 

 

After two bites of a delicious hamburger at the Arctic Roadrunner, I was literally foaming at the mouth.  I could eat no more, certainly didn’t want to, and soaked napkin after napkin with foamy saliva.  I could not stop it.   It was awful.  And embarrassing.

 

I employed my usual method of medical treatment: ignore it and it will go away.

 

And I went on like that for another couple decades, trying not to over-fill my stomach, and occasionally failing as the “signal” that I was full was slow. 

 

 Until two years ago.   That’s when the fan got plastered with globs of unpleasant stuff, so to speak.

 

Next:  Pain transference