Fun, fun, fun–doplication.

I have had a fundoplication as well as a heller myotomy and find it hard to believe how many new long words this has made me learn in the past few weeks! Anyway, the idea of this fun-thingie is to stop reflux. Now, as I am sure you are all aware by now, my achalasia has meant that my stomach valve was shut so I guess you want to know why I need reflux preventing surgery – no, you don’t want to know? Tough, I’m gonna tell you anyway!

You see, the heller myotomy splits the outer wall of the oesophagus to open up the valve. The oesophagus is something like a bicycle wheel (but without being circular obviously) – in that it is made of something like an inner tube and outer tyre - and in the myotomy, the outer tyre is split lengthways to allow the inner tube to relax outwards. The only problem with this is that once healed in this relaxed state, the valve never shuts again and so food goes in easily, but acid can come out just as easily. Result – swap achalasia for GERD in one easy session.

In order to prevent this they do the ‘fun’ thing which basically involves taking part of your stomach and wrapping it around the bottom of your oesophagus in a sort of knot and stitching it there. When your stomach contracts to throw acid up your gullet, it contacts the knot and effectively tightens it, (hopefully) preventing acid reflux. Isn’t that clever? Well, I thought so, so that’s why I’m telling you...

Of course, if they stitch the knot too tight, then you may as well continue to have achalasia, too loose and it won’t work, so here’s where I hope that my surgeon is really good and has it just right. So far, I can’t tell for sure, I have had heartburn like pains some nights since I had the surgery (but not all by any means) and of course, I’m not fully healed yet so that’s to be expected. I guess I’ll just report back in a couple of months and let you know just how clever my surgeon really is....