Living With GERD

Have you ever experienced that annoying feeling you want to constantly throw up? Are you on acid reflux medication that doesn’t always work? You might be experiencing what is known as GERD or Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease.

I have been living with GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease) for a number of years. It started in my early twenties. Whenever I ate greasy food, I would bring it back up not long after.

It would go away but come back with a vengeance when I least expected it. Finally, I decided to do something about it and went to the doctor. At the time, I was transitioning between GPs and nothing was found on the tests I did.

One test I did was taking a pill and then blowing it into a balloon. However, the issue was, to do the full test, you have to swallow the pill with a medicine cup full of water. I couldn’t do it.

A few years later once I found my new GP, I told him what was going on and he knew immediately what I might have had. He sent me to do the same test the previous doctor had. I tried to swallow the pill this time and I couldn’t.

The doctor ended up prescribing me with meds. He told me that if it didn’t get better he’d send me to a specialist.

When I couldn’t take the symptoms any more, he sent me to specialist.

The specialist told me when I saw him in late April 2024, that he didn’t believe what I had was real serious, but he wanted to be sure. I submitted my public hospital paperwork and currently sit on the waiting list to have a camera put down my throat to see what is doing on.

How I Feel When Symptoms Hit

I’ll go over GERD symptoms in another post, but I wanted to share how I feel when they do hit.

So, my symptoms of GERD consist of:

• Gag reflex
• Headache
• Vomiting when I eat too much
• Occasional cramps
• Nauseousness
• Cough
• Sore Throat

My GERD symptoms don’t all happen at once. There are times when I have to sleep the feeling off. It works a majority of the time, but there are times when it doesn’t. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen that often.

In this blog, I will be explaining as much as I can about the condition and how you can deal with yours too.