Playing Doctor Pinball Pays Off

I have written in the past about my ongoing troubles with GERD.  For those of you who don't want to travel back through my previous posts, I have GERD and up until today, I thought all of my pain was attributed to this terribly uncomfortable heartburn problem.  I was wrong...well, not all wrong, I did suspect that there was possibly something else.  About that, I was right.

My primary care doctor, a few weeks ago, sent me to a GI specialist to try to figure out why my heartburn was not being successfully controlled by medication and diet.  The GI specialist ordered an endoscopy.  Let me go off track here for a moment and tell you the wonderful story of how the endoscopy went.  They give you an IV and through that they give you nice drugs that relax you and help you doze off a bit.  My IV either punctured through the vein or was not in it at all.  All those wonderful drugs filled a nice lump in my arm, NOT getting into my bloodstream and therefore NOT making me relax or sleepy. Needless to say, I felt every moment and millimeter of the endoscopy.  Not a comfortable experience, but not terribly painful.  Thank goodness it only lasts a few minutes.  After the endoscopy was done, I would say about 30 minutes to an hour later, the drugs finally hit me and I slept like a baby for several hours.

OK, back to the story at hand.  The GI specialist, after hearing me explain that I don't get heartburn from foods, or when resting, and not too often when lying down anymore; but I do get it real bad whenever I try to engage in any physical activity, with no relief from medication, suspected I might have a heart problem in addition to the GERD.  He referred me to a cardiologist.

The cardiologist checked me out, did an EKG and a stress test with ultrasound and found an abnormality, "a narrowing".  So, now I get to go in and have an angiogram to find out the extent of this issue.

At least I know what the source of the pain is now and can move forward to get it resolved.

If you'll excuse me, I need to go shave my groin now.