Started about 8:00 last night. Every time I take a drink or try to eat something, it’s like I get a charley horse in my lower esophagus, right at the top of my breastbone. Hurts like hell. I googled it when I got to work, and what I came up with was esophageal spasms. But I couldn’t find anything about what causes it or how to fix it. Anybody got any idea? Ever heard of it?
Ouch… 
Might be spastic esophagus but probably not. Definitely worth consulting a physician, you might have a stricture or something else impinging on it.
Thanks for replying, **heavyarms553. **
Could it be an ulcer? I had an esophageal hernia as a teen and it made eating/drinking damn near impossible. It ranks up there for least pleasant experiences I’ve ever had. This is really something I would have a doctor look at right away.
Could be a spasm, could be an ulcer, could be GERD, could be a rupture, could be necrosis, could be cancer, could be an aneurysm, could be a heart attack…the list is nearly endless.
Go get it checked out.
Not sure, olives it just came out of nowhere. I did have really bad heartburn a few times last week. Could it be related? I really dont want to have to take time off work to go to the dr.
How in the world do you get an esophageal hernia? That sounds very painful… did it just hurt when you swallowed, or all the time?
It’s really hard to tell based on what the OP said. It might be anything, and speculating without any information is pretty useless. However, the symptoms described are strongly suggestive of a lower esophageal disease process and are certainly worth working up. My best guess is that they will do some imaging, probably including endoscopy, and find out.
The fact that it came on all of a sudden does narrow the differential diagnosis, though.
Straining, lifting heavy objects, vomiting, hard coughing and bearing down to have a bowel movement are the most common triggers. Happens more in obese, pregnant and/or people with liver disease with acites (fluid in the abdomen), but it can happen in young, thin, healthy people too.
Could also be a hiatal hernia. My mom had that condition and it was relieved after minor surgery.
Yeah, get it checked out. No need to suffer. 
Nobody wants to, but you must.
Just hurt swallowing, from what I remember (I was fourteen.) But man, did it hurt. I remember it would take me like an hour just to drink a glass of water or eat some raisins, because I had to take breaks from the pain. The doctor said it was most likely related to acid reflux/stress. I am somewhat ulcer prone, particularly when I’m stressed. I would say if you have been having bad acid reflux there could be a good chance of an ulcer or something similar.
Nobody wants to take time to go to the doctor. But trust me, you don’t want it to get worse.
I had a (nutcracker) esophageal spasm in my late 20s. Hurt like a mofo! Ever accidentally swallow a big, fat, pointy-cornered ice cube or a freshly unwrapped hard candy, like Halls? It was like that x10.
I’d just come off the field during an ultimate frisbee game and drinking really cold bottled water when someone bumped into me from behind. Not really hard tough, IMHO. I don’t know if that contributed at all to the ensuing spasm or not. In any case, the pain was wicked and I curled into a ball on the ground. By the time I was fully balled up with my forehead on the grass, the worst of the bad pain was over and I just had a mildly unpleasant just-swallowed-an-ice-cube feeling.
I’d been standing pretty much next to the first aid station and everyone pounced on me like I was having a heart attack. I’ve never had a heart issue of any kind, but IMHO, it didn’t feel the way I’ve always thought cardiac pain ought to feel. At the time, I pretty much knew it was my esophagus — it totally felt like I’d swallowed a really, really big ice cube that had exceptionally harsh corners. (If I really did swallow cellphones, I imagine that’s what it would feel like, with a particularly pokey antenna).
The medics calmed down a bit when all they got was a good, strong, steady pulse, but I was still taken to the hospital to rule out a cardiac event. By the time I got there, I felt totally normal, but they fast-tracked me right past all the sick and bleeding people. I felt really guilty that there were legitimately hurt people with broken bones in the waiting room… and I basically just had a cramp in my gullet.
You really will have to go to a doctor though because if it’s still bothering you there’s a ton of different stuff it could be. For me, it seemed to be a weird one-off, but they still did a batch of tests to make sure it wasn’t serious.
ETA: And FTR I’m not kidding when I say the pain was wicked. It was really intense.
I hope no one gets mad that I resurrect this thread- it is much fresher than zome of ze zombies that are coming up lately…
About 5pm last night we went out for a quick small pizza before we headed into rush hour traffic, and while I was eating I started having pretty major chest pains that began as my normal acid reflux swallowing issue, which is usually indicative that I have built up a stricture from the scar tissue in my esophagus because I ran out of my proton-pump inhibitor pills (the doctors, to fix it, rip it out/pop it out with a balloon during an upper GI endoscopy- until they do so, it is like I have a laproscopic band) and I can’t swallow food in bites too big, or drink carbonated beverages with solids in my stomach, and even then even water can be difficult in big swallows.
So this occurred, except instead of being the normal (swallow, pain, 30 seconds of agony, then it’s past the stricture and ah, better…) ouchie, then better- after one particularly big bite of pizza, washed down with a large mouthful of beer, it felt like instead of just slipping through the stricture with a blip of pain, then relief, the half chewed pizza crust seemed to rip a gash down several inches of my esophagus.
The pain was no longer limited to one spot about four inches below my supra-sternal notch, and instead simply started there. The next six inches down were a symphony of inquisition-level fun, and increasingly painful yet variable in intensity of pain.
So, no pain IN the stomach, and no nausea. This seemed to make the Physician’s assistant whom I got on the phone LESS happy and more concerned about the issue;
The scheduling PA was concerned that we might not be able to make it until tomorrow, but is willing to let my try, as long as I promise to go to the ER if it gets worse.
To be honest, I would have gone to the ER long before this, simply for trying to eat, if I wasn’t on rather strong pain meds for my back. I stopped them for a few weeks, but I had to go back on them. Damn it.
Any ideas before I see the Dr. tomorrow and get it figured out?
This is in IMHO, so not looking for a diagnosis, but anecdotes are good, and happy endings are better, but I am looking for anything that you think would have helped the op, as well, which is why I didn’t start my own thread.
Thanks!
I had oesophageal spasms, I used to think I was having severe heart palpitations or a heart attack. It would happen at night when I lay down to sleep, I’d start getting this violent thumping in my chest - so violent the bed would shake. I kept telling my GP about it, but nothing was done.
Thankfully we’d a fresh-out-of-college locum at the clinic about 2 years ago and she told me what was wrong with me and prescribed a tablet [that I cannot remember the name of], to be sucked or chewed at night.
It worked a treat, and I don’t suffer with the spasms any more. I only took the tablets for about 6 weeks.
Scary thing to have wrong with you though!
I have them too, the result of a hiatus hernia. The trouble is that the enervation of the esophagus is via the vagus nerve, which is also the nexus for the heart. So the chest pain of a spasm can be hard to distinguish from a cardiac event. It can be scary if you are aware of your own risks (weight, family history etc). It motivated me to lose weight and get fit, so I am not concerned about a spasm masking a heart attack.
I fear gurujulp made the wrong call, and that is really sad.
Si
In case anyone reading this thread hasn’t heard the sad news, gurujulp died last night. 
Context - gurujulp’s spouse posted to tell us that he passed away.
Oh man that was so difficult to read.
I hope that through this tragedy the lesson becomes clear: chest pains = ER.
RIP gurujulp.
Keep in mind that heart disease isn’t the only thing that can be serious with chest pain.
The way that gurujulp described things, I’m wondering if he may have suffered an esophageal perforation/rupture, which can also be rapidly fatal.
Unfortunately, if someone is used to dealing with chronic discomfort like this, I can see how it could be hard to judge when it’s bad enough that you should go to the ER.
Very sad that things turned out this way. My condolences to his family.
This seems like a kind of relevant place to post this - women’s heart attack symptoms aren’t the same as men’s.
I’m so sorry it ended like this - we always hope for it to be something like a gas bubble, and he’d come back and tell us a rueful story about a night in ER for it.