Blog Baltimore

Ever since January of this year I’ve been dealing with something called GERD which can also be referred to as heart burn. I live a fairly healthy life to a point in that I’m always moving around and attempting to exercise when I have the time. Unfortunately due to the move to the new Univ. of Maryland, Dental School there’s been less time for exercise outside of taking the stairs and lifting various computers. All of this coupled with the mass amount of IT problems we’ve been dealing with and attempting to keep our heads above water (and my coffee and nicotine obsession) has lead to a lot of stress and stomach problems.

I’ve drank excessively on the weekends and sometimes at night but I’ve never made a habit of it. I also smoke roughly half a pack of cigarettes a day, I don’t eat breakfast and usually lunch gets delayed. All of these things combined started giving me chest pains. I didn’t realize it was related to GERD though. I thought I was having mild heart attacks because that’s where the pain felt like it was coming from. I was stressing so much about going to the doctors and receiving bad news that I was giving myself bouts of syncope. I wasn’t actually fainting though, I’d get so light headed that I’d feel very close to fainting.

After a nasty episode where I was one number away from finishing 911 i headed to the doctors and found out it was related to stress and acid reflux (GERD.) My doctor ran tests and checked blood test based levels as well as did an EKG and everything showed fine. He prescribed me some medication which I’ve been taking and it helps. Now there are certain things that’ll set it off and all I can do is hope that the medication will calm it down enough not to worry me anymore than I already am. There have been times that it’s been so bad that I swore it was heart related but I keep reminding myself that it’s not.

The one thing that I’m slowly coming to grips with is the “life style”changing aspect of this “disease?” I have the foods that I love to eat and I have my habits which I love to abuse and these are the things that I need to look at changing. I don’t want to give up coffee and nicotine but I’m coming to realize that they’re one of the largest things that can cause it to flare up. I’m also trying to get in to the habit of eating slower as well as smaller portions. One suggestion was to eat more smaller meals through out the day instead of a couple major ones.

It’s going to suck but these are just some of the things that I’ll have to understand and come to grips with. I’m just happy it’s not heart disease.