I’m going on a date...Surgery date that is...!

I have been given a date for surgery^*1...it’s soon...in fact, it’s next Monday and so I feel an urgent need to get some stuff down on paper in the hope that it might be helpful to anyone else out there who is feeling just as freakish as me. Yep, you heard right – freakish!

Not being able to eat or drink without at least some discomfort makes you feel really weird. Mostly you can’t be bothered with food, as eating becomes a chore – something that you know you need to do, but holds absolutely no pleasure. Hubby is always asking me what I fancy for dinner... "Um, nothing" is usually the response. How can you fancy anything at all, when you don’t know what you can get down you? Trying to eat with friends or family seems (to me) to often result in pitying glances...Actually, that pity is appreciated, as at least it shows that they know you’re having a hard time and they are sympathetic to it. Strangers on the other hand see you going red in the face at the table, they see you leave your food and who knows what judgements they make? Somehow you feel a little ashamed for the waste of it all too – you want to explain there’s a problem, but it’s not really a dinner table kind of conversation, is it?

The fact of it all is that to eat a normal diet just hurts too much. I haven’t eaten bread easily for almost a year and my diet has become increasingly liquid - more and more soups and porridge etc. Less and less meat and vegetables and anything good for me; more yogurt, more custard (there’s some compensations then!) but less fruit. Do you know how boring it all gets after a while? I want toast and MacDonald’s and Subway and pizza and roly poly pudding (but not all at the same time) – but to try them at the moment would simply result in tears at the dinner table (if you eat things like MacDonald’s at the table which seems unlikely ....!). Anyway, if you have some issues like these, you know where I’m coming from – right?

The not eating is pretty awful, but supremely more gross than that is the following (now I’ve warned you so don’t blame me if you get all grossed out!). OK, the scenario is this – your stomach valve doesn’t open so food takes hours and hours to drip from your oesophagus through into your stomach (assuming you are upright and gravity is working fine today). Imagine if you will that you drink a cup of hot chocolate just before you go to bed. You lie down (gravity is effectively switched off) and the liquid goes nowhere. At 2am you slide down the bed a little and off the pillow and suddenly wake drowning in (no longer hot) chocolate. Yep, you breathe in your yummy drink (see I told you it was gross) and wake up violently coughing and spluttering. Frightening or what? It’s called aspiration, and it’s not very good for you (no? – you don’t say!!). If you have achalasia and you leave it untreated, this can lead to infection and you can get aspiration pneumonia....there – lesson to you – if you think you have achalasia – GET IT CHECKED OUT!

Anyway, I am getting fixed and although surgery doesn’t cure the condition it’s supposed to alleviate the symptoms and that’ll be good enough for me. I can’t wait to get back to seeing food on my plate without viewing it with suspicion!

^*1Heller myotomy