Food for thought

For any professionals out there, please excuse the rather poor drawing of my stomach above. It is the best I can do in the circumstances but it helps to explain to people a problem I have had for some time.

Back in 2016, it was discovered that I had a tumour growing on my stomach wall. I wrote about it at the time here. Known as a GIST (Gastro-Intestinal Stromal Tumour), the Stromal in this case refers to it growing in the stomach wall or muscle. In the drawing above, you can see the oesophagus or food pipe coming down into the stomach and the tumour (shown in red) was just below that near the top of the stomach. Fortunately the tumour was benign but it was removed as they can become aggressive, if left. The whole procedure was supposed to be done by laparoscopes, but it was awkward to remove that way and the four-hour operation resulted in me being opened up completely, so I have a vertical zip-fastener scar down my middle.

So far so good. Unfortunately, the stomach wall that was removed with the tumour contained nerves which tell the pyloric sphincter (the little black line shown at the base of the stomach) to open and spill its contents into the duodenum and onwards to the intestines. Consequently without that nerve constantly nagging the sphincter to open, my stomach only empties when it feels like it and can be bothered. It results in food and acid building up which then refluxes into my throat, often in the middle of the night when I am in a deep sleep, and I wake choking. I have to take meds to neutralise the acid and also occasionally have the pyloric sphincter stretched via a gastroscopy to encourage it to open better. My consultant prefers to do the procedure once a year or even once every six months as the valve gets very lazy indeed. It is pushing two years since I last had it done, so had been experiencing more problems with the acid reflux including one awful episode where I was in a deep sleep and the acid came up and went into my lungs instead, resulting in my "drowning" and fighting for my breath for over half an hour. As you can imagine, living on my own, this was a frightening experience, so I immediately arranged for another gastroscopy and stretch which was done two days ago.

Because of the acidity problem, I cannot eat too late into the day and need at least 4 hours between eating and going to bed. I also have a nightmare choosing what to eat when dining out. These days most menus seem to be full of spicy this and spicy that with chilli or curry or other fiery combinations - all of which can cause my stomach to flare up. It is so difficult to find something on the menu that is not going to cause me problems. I wish chefs would realise that not everyone has a cast-iron stomach. Obviously things could be far worse in old age and I must be grateful this is the only real medical problem I have.