I miss eating dinner
This hasn’t been a great month on the health front for me. While I have been generally blessed through my life without any serious physical ailments, the specter of aging creeps upon me and begins crumbling this mortal body to dust. In the past month, I’ve had all my chronic issues of their varying severities hitting me one after the other, with a migraine, depression-related weirdness, and recurrent severe heartburn. All that, on top of a persistent cold that I couldn’t seem to kick. It’s really slowed me down and made me lose a ton of time.
The heartburn has been especially vexing, getting steadily more frequent with no obvious cause. I have a fairly healthy regular diet, but I would periodically eliminate the possible culprits— dairy, tomatoes, caffeine, carbonation, even lying down too soon after eating —and it never seemed to make a difference to whether I got it or not. I never did notice any pattern in it— except, possibly, that it seemed to overwhelmingly trigger later in the day. I got put on various anti-reflux medicines, which would work for a short time then quit. I was living on Pepto-Bismol, and it’s now at the point where that doesn’t even really work anymore.
I was referred to a gastroenterologist who has me scheduled for an endoscopy— wheeeeeee, gut snake —but it’s not for a while yet. In the meantime, I had to do something, as the symptoms had become increasingly frequent and intolerable. So I’m currently trying the only thing I could think of— not letting myself eat anything after 4pm. Since the only constant I noticed was I very, very rarely experienced symptoms early in the day, it seemed like it was worth a shot to just not give ANYTHING the chance to trigger it. And it is with mixed feelings that I must report that it worked.
I’ve been doing it for a week now, and I haven’t had any flare-ups since. It hasn’t been easy— it basically means I can’t eat dinner, which super sucks, and given my schedule, it’s hard to make sure I eat enough for the day before the cutoff time. I’m starting to get used to it, but it’s really not easy for me. Even with all the various issues I’ve had with food over the years, I’ve never been able to just make myself not eat when I was very hungry. I’ve had a few days where come evening my big guts were eating my little guts, and it took all the willpower I had. But the heartburn has been frequent enough that I’m starting to worry about ruining my esophagus, and this has been the only thing to consistently work.
I’m really hoping that the endoscopy will pinpoint the real problem. A silent ulcer, maybe, or a hiatal hernia. Something that can be decisively fixed once it’s identified. I really don’t want to spend forever not being able to consistently share an evening meal with people. That would seriously bum me out. But in the meantime, this is the best I’ve got.
The heartburn has been especially vexing, getting steadily more frequent with no obvious cause. I have a fairly healthy regular diet, but I would periodically eliminate the possible culprits— dairy, tomatoes, caffeine, carbonation, even lying down too soon after eating —and it never seemed to make a difference to whether I got it or not. I never did notice any pattern in it— except, possibly, that it seemed to overwhelmingly trigger later in the day. I got put on various anti-reflux medicines, which would work for a short time then quit. I was living on Pepto-Bismol, and it’s now at the point where that doesn’t even really work anymore.
I was referred to a gastroenterologist who has me scheduled for an endoscopy— wheeeeeee, gut snake —but it’s not for a while yet. In the meantime, I had to do something, as the symptoms had become increasingly frequent and intolerable. So I’m currently trying the only thing I could think of— not letting myself eat anything after 4pm. Since the only constant I noticed was I very, very rarely experienced symptoms early in the day, it seemed like it was worth a shot to just not give ANYTHING the chance to trigger it. And it is with mixed feelings that I must report that it worked.
I’ve been doing it for a week now, and I haven’t had any flare-ups since. It hasn’t been easy— it basically means I can’t eat dinner, which super sucks, and given my schedule, it’s hard to make sure I eat enough for the day before the cutoff time. I’m starting to get used to it, but it’s really not easy for me. Even with all the various issues I’ve had with food over the years, I’ve never been able to just make myself not eat when I was very hungry. I’ve had a few days where come evening my big guts were eating my little guts, and it took all the willpower I had. But the heartburn has been frequent enough that I’m starting to worry about ruining my esophagus, and this has been the only thing to consistently work.
I’m really hoping that the endoscopy will pinpoint the real problem. A silent ulcer, maybe, or a hiatal hernia. Something that can be decisively fixed once it’s identified. I really don’t want to spend forever not being able to consistently share an evening meal with people. That would seriously bum me out. But in the meantime, this is the best I’ve got.