The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
10:44am on Wednesday, 2nd February, 2005:
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As if it weren't bad enough that my heart might stop at any moment or I might choke to death on an ill-fitting dental palette, I am also staring death in the face with a condition known as acid reflux. This isn't serious in itself (although the reason I didn't put in a link to a definition of the term just now is because I couldn't find a web page that discussed it without saying it was a symptom of Something Much Worse). Basically, all it means is that every once in a while I get a jolt of highly corrosive stomach acid zooming up my oesophagus into my mouth. "Every once in a while" here translates to maybe 3 or 4 times a year.
The thing is, this only happens when I'm asleep, and when it does happen there's a 50/50 chance I'll breathe in the acid. The result is about 20 seconds of my gasping for breath while drowning in my own stomach acid. It's a very unpleasant experience, like whooping cough except what I'm trying to expel from my lungs is trying to corrode them. Fortunately, I've found that there are certain foods that cause it more than others, and if I steer clear of those near bedtime I'm generally OK. The main culprits are digestive biscuits (are those ever misnamed — "indigestive biscuits" would be more accurate), but buns and things like that can do it, too.
Some acid refluxed on me last night, with no apparent cause. Fortunately, I was able to reswallow it rather than fatally inhale it. One of these days, though...
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Copyright © 2005 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).