OK, so I’ve had an “unexplained cough” for a long time now. Several years, in fact. Each year at my annual physical I would tell my PCP (an APRN) that I still had “that cough.” They had done a chest x-ray (normal), a breathing test to rule out asthma and then I was in Prilosec for just a week, to see if I had acid reflux. I was really supposed to stay on it for at least 2 weeks, but I stopped after 1 week with no difference.
I had some extremely infrequent instances of acid reflux, nearly every time after I had a big bowl of pasta…with lots of acidic tomato sauce…. for dinner.
So, as I said, I would dutifully report the cough each year, and each year she’d do one test and then never follow up with me, and truth be told I wanted to forget about it so I didn’t call her. For some reason I had it in my head that diagnosing the source of my problem would be a long, drawn out affair with lots of diagnostic tests which, even with health insurance, I feel I can ill afford (haven’t met the deductible this year).
I finally went to the ear, nose and throat guy today, who she’d finally referred me to last year before I got that middle ear infection.
I told the doc my issues and lickety split, before I could say I don’t want that long tube thingy up my nose, well, he inserted a long thin tube thingy up my nose. He said it was definitely inflamed and suspected “silent” acid reflux but wants me to do another unpleasant procedure next week to determine for sure.
The unpleasant procedure is to have them insert another tube, about the size of a piece of spaghetti (not sure if that’s width or length) up my nose while it’s connected to a mini computer attached to my waist. I have to go home with this thing and sleep with it overnight so it can record the acidity in my stomach! Then I return the next day to have them remove the tube. Ick. Ugh. Gag.
If that’s in fact my problem, I have to go on medication. Not clear how long. Could be a few months or forever. Also, becus I’ve had this cough for a long time, he wants me to go to a GI guy for a barium x-ray to make sure there’s no damage to my esophagus tissue or whatever. Happy, joy, joy.
I do feel somewhat relieved to know this is probably what it is. My other fear about this thing was that it was a cancerous tumor in my throat, and I was taking a rather fatalistic approach to it all. (I tend to self-diagnose the worst case scenarios all the time.) Silent acid reflux can be somewhat helped by changes in habit and diet, meaning, don’t eat 3 hours before bedtime and avoid things like tomatoes (love ‘em), chocolate (oh no), alcohol, caffeine (no!), cheese and eggs (uh oh).
I’d just like this cough to go away. It’s gotten to the point where people notice it and ask what’s wrong, and it’s also frequent enough that I worry I’m gonna start hacking away during at an inopportune time, like a job interview. Which I had scheduled for this a.m. until they called and said it was cancelled cus the woman was sick.
So I go back on Monday to have the tube inserted. I have Mondays and Tuesdays off from work, so that works fine and I won’t lose any work time. But I’m already feeling nervous about it.
The nose knows
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