So. Thursday night, the chest pain and, you know, vomiting (ew), that sent me to the ER a few weeks ago came back, again at the sunny (or not so) hour of 3 in the morning. If there’s something worse than waking up at three in the morning thinking I’m having a heart attack, I have yet to experience it.

This time we didn’t call 911, so no bambulance ride (thank goodness) but I was still miserable for the next hour and a half till I could finally fall asleep again.

When I was still feeling an ache in my chest by the afternoon, BandGeek made me call my doctor. Unfortunately she wasn’t in, but they sent me to her backup. An hour and a half of steamy, hot, miserable car ride away, no less.

At any rate, the backup doctor was very pleasant. And since this is the second episode of this type I’ve had in the last couple weeks, she’s thinking it might actually be a physical problem and not just reflux.

Enter: potential hiatal hernia.

I debated putting a picture, but I found one that’s not too bad.

See the source image
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A hiatal hernia is not like a hernia in your abdomen…or other places. It’s not visible from the outside. What happens is the diaphragm that regulates food from your esophagus into your stomach – or acid from your stomach from making its way back up into your esophagus – is weak, and a part of the stomach has actually made its way up through that opening and into the chest cavity. This can cause all kinds of crappy stuff like major heartburn, reflux…and chest pain. The thing that freaks me out (thanks, google) is that everything I’m reading says that things like nausea, chest pain, and stomach pain are all warning signs that the hernia might be strangulated or that the blood supply to the stomach is getting cut off.

The doctor is thinking that this could be causing the symptoms, since she, my usual doctor, and the ER docs all ruled out problems with my heart, lungs, or gall bladder. She showed me the linked website above, explained what the next steps are, and I left, the proud owner of a referral for an endoscopy. Not to be confused with a colonoscopy, of course.

So, in ten or so days I should have an appointment for the endoscopy and know for sure if that’s the problem. I guess while they’re in there, they can check for all number of things like these hernias, ulcers, all kinds of fun stuff. So maybe we’ll find something out.

If it is, then it’s surgery to fix it, if it needs to be fixed. Which is scary, but…preferable to just managing symptoms for the rest of my life. Meanwhile, I’m on double doses of Prilosec, and trying not to freak out every time my chest twinges. And trying to avoid doing too much googling. Which, as we know, is my spe-cial-ity. So it will be a long ten days.

What’s funny is, on the way to the doctor my boss texted me to ask the doctor about this. Which means if she’s right, and this is what it is, I will never live it down. But I will also owe her, big time.

So, progress! Maybe. We’ll see.