Copy of email to WWW list
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Question:
Hello all, I wanted to post a copy of an email I just sent to a WWW list. Look forward to any comments. To: Gastroenterology Highlights > i have had acid reflux disease for 8 years now and it has progressively > gotten worse > even though i am on the prevacid , propulcid and galvescon. after many > > > tests my doctor has referred me to a surgeon for the nilssen > fundolophain procedure to be > > done after my > vacation in february. has anyone had this operation, and how are you >
doing afterwards? Dear Eileen, I can imagine I will get flamed and jumped on by some of the readers of this group but I feel I must make some comments to you about the operation you are contemplating. Please, I beg you to do some research into this operation before you agree to have it done. There are lots of sites that discuss the merits of this operation and I have seen many posts by people who have had to have the operation done again because it didn’t work and other people who still have the same or more reflux after the operation was done. May I give you and anyone else reading this a few things to think about concerning the operation which I believe is correctly named: "Laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication" There are many, many web sites that discuss this operation. Try and find some where the patients who have undergone the operation tell their side of the story. There *are* such sites but you have to dig pretty deep to find them but isn’t your life and well being worth the effort? There are many, many actions you can do for yourself to help with your condition of acid reflux. I have no medical training but I speak from personal experience. I was diagnosed with a hiatal hernia (hh) in 1975. For 20 years I controlled the acid reflux by altering my lifestyle, being careful what and when I ate, taking over-the-counter antacids and Zantac 150 mg. as needed. I did pretty good until 1996 when I took early retirement. My lifestyle changed for the worse and my acid reflux rapidly got worse until my esophagus was so tender I couldn’t hardly eat anything. The food just wouldn’t go down the esophagus. I was down to eating cold cereal with milk only and was losing weight rapidly. I was right on the verge of calling a surgeon to make an appointment to have the Laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication operation done. I honestly thought it was the only way to save my life. Just before I made the call to the surgeon, I decided to educate myself as much as possible about the acid reflux and see if there was anything I could do for myself by lifestyle changes and through alternative medicine. Luckily I discovered there were many lifestyle changes I could do very easily and some alternative medicine I could try. First, let me say that when it comes to the digestive system and in fact the whole body, mind and spirit there is *nothing* absolute. What may work for me may not work for you and vice versa. And what may work for me one day may not work the next day. Your health is a continually, changing, balancing act and lots of things you do everyday can have an adverse reaction on your health, especially acid reflux. For example, I’ll bet many people do exactly like I did for years and immediately after supper, normally the largest meal, head for the nearest recliner and sit back to watch TV for a while. It took me years to understand that that simple act can cause acid reflux to be much worse than if you went for a small walk after supper. It’s explained very simply. If you are walking, your esophagus is in a vertical position and gravity helps keep the acid down in your stomach where it should be but if you recline or lay back even a very small degree, the acid in your stomach splashes up and comes in contact with your lower esophagus spinchter muscle (LES). The acid coming in contact with your LES causes it, the LES, to become weakened and inturn allow the acid to reflux up into your esophagus. This weakening of the LES can take days, months and even years and happens so gradually that most people don’t notice the problem until your esophagus becomes tender, sore or even ulcerated. This is sometimes called esophagitis (spelling??). And of course as some people point out many times (which is good but as I read this list every day, it does get tiring after a while) acid reflux can become serious and life threatening since continuous reflux can cause the esophagus to change to Barretts Esophagus which can become cancerous. Even your posture while eating can affect acid reflux. If you slouch, the way most people do, when eating you will have more acid reflux. Slouching causes a pressure to be placed agains your LES and can cause the LES to fail to close properly. Sitting up straight can help. Now, since this condition (sore, tender or ulcerated esophagus) happened over many days, months or even years, it will probably take days, months or even a year or more to allow your LES to heal itself by keeping the acid reflux away from the LES by simply taking a walk after your meals rather than sitting in a recliner or slouching down in any chair. Surprisingly, just this one simple act can help a lot of people with acid reflux. Raising the head of your *bed frame* from ten to fifteen inches will also help tremendously. I have slept with the head of my bed frame raised ten inches for over ten years and it is the one thing that has helped with my reflux problem more than anything else. Some people say that just propping your head up with pillows or a foam wedge will work also but I strongly disagree with this. By just propping your head up, you do put your esophagus at a more vertical alignment but you also put more pressure on your stomach, LES and the diaphragm that separates your chest from your abdomen area. It’s my opinion that this added pressure in that area hinders your LES from closing as tightly as possible without the added pressure. Now, I remind you that what works for me may not work for you and vice versa but as you will see, trying to control acid reflux is a balancing act that a lot of seemingly small things can have an affect on. Raising the head of your bed seems a small price to pay to me to help control the acid reflux. I’m married and my wife and I sleep in the same bed. I really prefer the raised head of the bed to a flat bed now and raising the head of the bed doesn’t cause any major problems. We do slightly slide down the bed during the night as we toss and turn but it is real simple to slide back up and of course if you don’t toss and turn, you probably won’t slide down. When I first raised the head of my bed, I used books stacked on the floor. The books kept falling down occasionally so I finally had a metal frame made just for this purpose. Works great. Only cost about $78.00. Well worth every penny spent. But, before I go any further, let’s go back to the operation, the Laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication, you are considering and let me in layman’s terms try to explain what the surgeon is planning to do. Basically, he is going to wrap the upper part of your stomach ( the part of your stomach that has pooched up from your abdomen into your chest area) around the lower part of your esophagus in an effort to tighten the LES. A few points need to be explained. The esophagus is basically a tube that allows chewed food, both solid and liquid, to pass from your mouth to your stomach. The LES is suppose to be a one-way valve that is suppose to allow food and liquids to travel in one way only. Occasionally, the LES does open the opposite way (it really doesn’t open the ‘opposite’ way, this is just the easiest way to explain it to you) to allow gas to escape from your stomach. That is when you burp. And very importantly, if you ever eat bad food, poisoned or spoiled, or anything that needs to come backup, the LES opens to allow you to vomit. If a person has had the Laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication performed almost everyone agrees that you cannot vomit. You have to dig real deep to get anyone to admit this. Further, if you can find an honest surgeon he/she will tell you that when they first started doing the Laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication several years ago, the surgeons did a ‘full wrap’ meaning the stomach was wrapped fully around the esophagus. Later, experience showed the surgeons that a full wrap didn’t work for some people, especially with anyone who had trouble swallowing. The full wrap caused more problems than it helped. Then the surgeons started to experiment with partial wraps. Some stomach wraps were wrapped around the stomach only 90%, 80%, 70%, 60% or whatever the surgeon thought was appropriate for the patient. And as many patients discovered, this is not an exact science. So some patients had problems because the wrap was too tight or it didn’t help because it was too loose. You might ask your prospective surgeon what percent wrap he/she plans to do on you and why. Might be interesting to hear what his/her reasoning was in making that decision. Another problem with the Laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication operation is fairly easy to see if you stop and think about it. The surgeon is trying to replace a ‘muscle’, remember the lower esophagus spinchter muscle (it’s the same type spinchter muscle at your anus) or LES, with a piece of your stomach wrapped around your esophagus. Now, the ‘muscle’ instinctively knows when to open or close. There is no way a part of your stomach can know when to open or close. Whatever position the surgeon sews your stomach wrap around your esophagus, will remain the same. There isn’t going to be any … read more »
Response:
Thanks.I’m just beginning to learn and accept this.I’m grieving my food,glass of afternoo n wine,and morning cup of coffee.
Response:
Ah, yes. Understood. However, it is much better to grieve those things than to grieve for your life. Gentle as you go, Marny
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> Thanks.I’m just beginning to learn and accept this.I’m grieving my food,glass > of afternoo > n wine,and morning cup of coffee.
Response:
Moses here: I hope you are on a better drug than Zantac, now! As certainly you… well almost…. are. A PPI drug is what an F-16 is to an early biplane. Examples of PPI drug brand names here in the States are Prilosec, Prevacid & Aciphex. It doesn’t look like you are getting flamed by anything other than stomach acid. Thank you for the nice posting. Visit us again. Best Wishes Moses Clarke * Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet’s Discussion Network * The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet – Free!
