“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”—Sharon Begley.

Just as the zizzies got underway, I was still dealing with the lingering effects of the upper gut symptoms, which had calmed considerably after I had the PEG put in, the recurrance of the on-off lower gut symptoms and the apparently worsening reflux. 

I decided to give hypnotherapy another go. I found a practitioner who just happened to be versed in the new gut-specific hypnotherapy and I began sessions with her, but once again I was met with the infamous “no effect detected” response. 

The psychiatrist I was seeing decided to put me on olanzapine 5 mg and as I was really concerned that any drug was more likely to make things worse rather than better, I decided to split the pill in two, taking 2.5 mg. I did this for about a week before deciding that it was just too likely to cause more problems, and I decided to stop it entirely. I had no idea what I just done to myself. More on this later.

I was also self-medicating with otilonium, one of the gut activity suppressing medications I once tried to no avail.

She wasn’t happy with my self-medicating, so she “fired” me, leaving me to find another psychiatrist who could perform hypnosis.

At this point, the laryngopharyngeal reflux, LPR, was really getting severe. There is a test of their severity called the reflux finding score which has a maximum of 26, and mine was at 19. Normal is 0.

PPIs and H2 blockers had no detectable effect (surprised?). The lower gut symptoms were at their worst now, just like they were back in 1997. This time there was no revelation from Dr. Schuster telling me I had a new disease to calm them down anymore. The symptoms were free to do as they will. 

My anxiety levels were through the roof. I was really coming apart at the seams. And for the first time, I had thoughts of suicide. 

I did find another psychiatrist who did hypnosis though she had to get some info from Dr. Olafur Palsson to do the gut-specific protocol. Though as before, I couldn‘t detect any effect. 

At this point, the GI was seeing wasn’t taking me seriously and I fired him. Ironically, he was the one who put in the PEG.

Right after that, I started to notice a new symptom. My throat developed a burning sensation. 

I couldn’t find any literature connecting a burning throat to LPR or to anything for that matter. Even on the Internet, there really wasn’t anyone complaining of a burning throat. This was definitely a symptom new to medical science, although it didn’t require any more fancy a name than burning throat.

So here I am dealing with a multitude of symptoms simultaneously, the LPR, which had its own symptoms of coughing and the feeling of something (actually just gastric juice) constantly regurgitating into my throat, the lower gut symptoms and this burning throat and, of course, all the anxiety these symptoms were bringing on. Oh and don’t forget the aerophagia. Of course, the PEG was doing its job nicely. At least I was no longer bloated.

Soon, however, I started focusing on the burning throat as my main symptom.  The pain was 100% constant with no respite regardless of anything I did or at least that I was able to tell at this stage. 

I visited Dr. Jaime Koufman who took a while before she at least partially understood what I was experiencing, though her recommended treatment was laughably silly; she recommends a low to no acid diet, as if that could possibly have any effect. It was just too silly to even consider. (At this point, I still had some rationality left in me, but not for much longer.) She did, however, recommend gabapentin as that she claimed could heal vagal dysfunction. Eventually, I started on a trial, but it seem to make the zizzies worse, and it had other side effects, which I hadn’t previously experienced.

If that all wasn’t enough, there was yet another symptom about to rear its ugly head.