Finally Botox, Just Not Where I Thought It Would Go

  Today J, B and I went to Dr. S (Gastro) to see what that the test results confirmed. Dr. S comes in the room and sits down. He says "We'll you'll either like what I have to say or not". I mean what can you say to that? At least he's honest. I have severe pill residue in my esophagus. Then at the bottom part the nerves are so tight that the opening is like nothing. He dilated it when he was in there the first time, and was happy to hear that I don't have the stuff in the back of my throat anymore. He said that by dilating that should have helped some. I need to keep a pain journal. Like what I ate, drank and took my pills so that he can find out what is causing my pain.

   We discussed what we could do;
   1) I need to split my pills up more, time wise. Now I'm not sure how to do this exactly. I'll have to talk to all of my other doctors for help. I have AM pills he wants me to take them over a span of a couple of hours. Same with the dinner pills. Then there's really nothing I can do with my nighttime pills.

    2) Drink lots of lukewarm water. This will relax the muscles and make it easier to swallow. I guess              there goes my ice cold drinks.

    3) When my esophagus hurts take these Peppermint Oil Pills. For some reason they will help. I have to see where I can get them because we don't have Whole Foods, Vitamin Cottage, etc...

    4) He can go in and dilate my esophagus again. But that sounded more like a bandaid.

    5) I have to get some lab work and a cat scan of my chest and stomach. This is to check for tumors. I thought when I got the letter in the mail that the biopsies weren't cancerous meant that. He said don't be nervous because there should be cysts, but no one is perfect

    6) FINALLY, the only real thing he can do to help is inject botox into the bottom of my esophagus. Now sometimes the insurance companies do not like to pay for this because it costs thousands of dollars. And it might only last for 6 months to a year.  This would be my only real options he said.

  I asked him if this is caused by pills and he said that any pill you take has side effects so you take that chance. Below are the pictures of my esophagus. The top left one is the pill residue in about my chest area. The lower left is going farther down. The top right is at the bottom of it, as you see there is barely an opening. And the lower right is from inside my stomach looking back up a the bottom of my esophagus. This is a rare disease called Achalasia.

           

            Achalasia is a rare disease of the muscle of the lower esophagealbody and the lower esophageal sphincter.The cause of achalasia is unknown; however, there is degeneration of the esophageal muscles and, more importantly, the nerves that control the muscles.