In the past I would sometimes make the mistake of being very hungry while forgetting that soon I’d be going to bed, and thus eat a large meal only to then pay the price when I’d lay down and try and sleep.
The food mass would shoot up the throat when sleep would come and relax me, causing stomach acid to burn the throat and the whole incidence(s) would be something so horribly unpleasant with the burning and beyond disgusting taste that I don’t know that the English language has the words to describe it!
Anybody else ever had the experience, and would you agree that those things are absolutely beyond HORRIBLE?!
Btw, I think I’ve heard that some unfortunate folks have some type of condition that causes them to have them on a regular bases, if that’s true all I can say is that I truly pity them and hope they keep a big bottle of Pepto Bismal by their beds to neutralize the god-awful stuff as best they can.
I had a real “wake up in the middle of the night EVENT” for the first time the other day. I take a Protonix daily to stave off unbearable pain in my esophagus but I’ve never really had a problem with acid coming up into my throat.
A couple weeks ago I had pizza way too close to bed. I woke up with a “acid burp” where acid comes up into my throat and I have to cough it up before it goes down my windpipe. This happens once in a great while. Usually I can take a chewable something and it stops and I go to bed.
This time, it didn’t stop! My esophagus was churning acid up into my throat over and over again. I stumbled to the kitchen and stood there, coughing and spitting, with no relief in site! I was like “oh man, this is how I am going to die. Passed out naked in my kitchen, choking on my own stomach acid because I ate too much damn pizza. Typical fat person!”
I grabbed a box of baking soda and started ingesting spoonfulls, chased with water. It didn’t seem to help. I found some old Saltine crackers and those actually did it.
Next day, it was like nothing happened.
Now I totally understand my parents when they say they can’t eat this or that, or at a certain time. Cuz they are prone to such attacks as I experienced.
I think we’re going to all switch to an all-bland diet pretty soon here. Yuck.
March of last year, my wife’s birthday, we’re having lunch at a restaurant, it’s around two in the afternoon. I always have my big meal of the day early just because of the GERD. Had a bowl of crab bisque/chowder/whatever, figured it would all be down the pipe by bedtime. Twelve hours later, I have a mouthful of it and didn’t wake up immediately. I’d say two teaspoonsful got into the windpipe with predictable results. It took better than six months–and two doctors–for the bronchial/respiratory damage to repair itself (God knows how many drugs).
This is undoubtedly why I married my wife–she went online and found an inclined frame to sit on top of the existing bedframe so the head is 6 inches higher than the foot. GERD begone! ::keeping fingers crossed::
Two years ago my acid reflux got really bad. Unfortunately, it ended up happening at the same time that I got a bad case of athlete’s foot and some other minor maladies.
Y’see, I was under a lot of stress, and my diet had gone from bad to horrible (Burger King for 2 meals a day, almost every day). I was in a stage production at the time, and I started itching uncontrollably as well as sneezing all the time with a constant burning tickle in my sinuses.
It all came to a head one night on the way to rehearsal when my tongue started to swell. I instantly detoured to the ER and got to stay there for a few hours. The consensus was that I was allergic to something (I didn’t even know I -had- AR at the time), and I was sent to an allergist.
Long story shorter: I was misdiagnosed for about 8 months. After that time (as nothing got better) I got a second opinion. Athlete’s foot was dealt with, and it was discovered that the acid reflux had gotten so bad it had gone up into my sinuses and damaged my Eustachian tubes enough that all manner of swelling along my jaw and inside my mouth had transpired, including the tongue.
When I was first dealing with my gastro guy about this, he asked if I was taking anything. I told him I was taking OTC Prilosec, and he actually laughed. “You’re taking this.” He motioned with his hand to about chest height. “You need to be taking this.” He motioned with his other hand to over-head height.
Thankfully, with the meds I’m on and being watchful of avoiding too much fried or spicy food (I can still eat it, just not a -lot- of it) I’m surviving perfectly well. But the tongue swelling thing, and the inside-the-sinus-burn-itch-unstoppable had me really freaked out!
My poor little baby grandson has acid reflux. He eats his bottle hungrily, then just a few minutes later he stiffens, make a horrible face and screams. This happens every time the poor little guy eats! The meds they give him keep the backwash down, so he can keep his food in his body, but he is clearly just miserable. It must really hurt him. We’re all hoping it’s developmental and he grows out of it when he gets older and can move around more.
Mine acts up when I’m heavier. Even losing a few pounds helps keep mine at bay.
Is an event beyond horrible? Well sitting here right now I say it’s sure not fun, but there’s certainly much worse. However in the middle of the night when it wakes me with that horrible feeling and the next day my throat and sinus still burn and I’m so tired from being woke by it; yeah, then it’s beyond horrible.
I had popped in to say that yes, it’s awful, but it’s got nothing on a heavy gallstone flare-up (when you wake up in the middle of the night and think “Oh, please let this be a heart attack”, you know it’s nasty), but then I read this:
And promptly offered up a prayer to every god I could think of thanking them for my abilities to 1. understand and 2. complain. Life’s disappointments, as Calvin noted, are hard to take when you don’t know any swear words; when you don’t know any words at all, when you know nothing beyond the pain of hunger and the pain of sating hunger…
Time to add on to that prayer. “And knock it off with the torturing of babies, or I will have to kick your asses. Seriously- don’t make me come up there.”
I had a fundoplication about 15 years ago to help manage reflux, which it did a good job of until recently. I don’t know if the wrap loosened or what, but every so often, I’m jolted awake with a mouthful of stomach acid. That’s bad enough, but it’s when some is aspirated, it takes a good while to get things calmed down so I can go back to sleep.
If I have that icky feeling that I may have an episode (I’ve had 2 in my life and that’s plenty), I take a big swig of apple cider vinegar. Nasty. But it seems to work. Chase it with a lot of water.
Recusant, thank you for your fierce defense of my little grandson. I always say that if anyone hurts my family, I’ll scratch their eyes out! I thought I was pretty fierce about that, but you have me beat. If you want to take on the folks upstairs about torturing babies, though, I’m right beside you, claws ready.
It really, really can hurt. I’ve had GERD for a long time (it goes with being asthmatic). I only recently found out that there are liquid medications for babies with reflux. Had no idea that the poor little tiny ones can get it! That’s just wrong.
I had it happen to me once, when I was about 16 or so. No obvious reason, I just woke up, about 7am, feeling a fine stream of acid coursing up almost all the way to the end of my nose. Fine way to start my day.
I had one instance with the reflux coming all the way up while sleeping. It was indeed very unpleasant! I sleep on my left side since then and it hasn’t happened again. I’ve been taking omeprazole daily since 2012. Aside from that one episode, I otherwise get nearly constant but sort of mild burning if I don’t take the omeprazole. I buy it from a woman on eBay who gets it from Mexico and costs me about $4 a month.
Recusant, why not get that gallbladder removed? I had one pain episode that made me take myself to the ER, after an ultrasound confirming stones and a slightly elevated WBC count, they admitted me for removal the next day. Turns out afterward, my “flare ups” were actually those occasional bouts of nausea I had been having after some meals during the preceding months. I had no other symptoms until that one day of enough pain to take me to the hospital. Surely if you’re having bouts of pain that make you hope for a heart attack, it’s enough to justify the surgery? I can’t imagine going through that more than once! That’s awful.
I don’t normally have acid reflux, but whenever I’m in the hospital (which has, unfortunately, been annually for the last three years) I get it very badly. It’s the whole being stuck in bed all day thing…the beds never actually get all the way upright and I just get horrible reflux and nausea. I pretty much puked my way through an MRI last year because of it…I had reflux even before the MRI began and it felt like it took ten years to finish. I just couldn’t get all the way through it without losing it to nausea.
Well, on the one hand I’m relieved to see that I’m not the only one who has aspirated stomach acid in the night, but on the other hand, burpo the wonder mutt and ArrMatey’s stories show that it could be a whole lot worse. Damn.
Waking up from a dead sleep to find yourself on your feet, emitting loud raspy whoops, with your heart hammering, your brain in full-on panic mode, and completely unable to draw breath truly sucks, let me tell you.
Along the same line, here’s a quick fix for any bed: You can set the entire bed on an incline by putting a couple bricks or blocks of wood on the floor under each bedpost at the head of the bed (and one brick under any bedposts at the middle of the bed).
As you probably know, it’s not enough to try to raise one’s head with extra pillows; the entire bed has to be on an incline to provide any real relief from acid reflux.
Of course this only works if you anticipate having an attack that night or if you have attacks so frequently that you just leave the bed like that permanently.
I’ve been stuck with heartburn (or whatever you want to call it) for the past few months. I’ve had it mostly under control for a few years with 20, then 40mg of omeprazole, but it’s been acting up lately, bad enough, painfully enough that I emailed my GI doc. Over the past few months we switched me to Nexium. Didn’t help, Dexlilant, helped a little, but not enough to warrant $500 for a 90 day script and I just started Protonix this morning.
She said it’s totally normal for a PPI that’s been working great to just suddenly stop for no reason (and random internet forum posts back this up).
Tums work pretty well for me, better than Pepto (but I do love the taste of Pepto). A few tums and about 10 minutes later I’ll let out a huge belch and the pain goes down by about 25%. Better than nothing. My GP (not quite sure how he got looped into the emails), suggested I switch from Tums to Gaviscon (OTC). It’s a different set of meds and he said it won’t cause a rebound. I haven’t noticed it working as well as Tums, but I’m willing to give it a shot. Also, today, along with the Protonix, they also called in Carafate. I had that when I had my endoscopies, but I’ve yet to use it for heartburn. Unfortunately. the liquid was $126 a bottle, so they called in the tablets which are somewhat cheaper. I’m supposed to crush them, soak the powder in water, then swallow that. They tell me it’ll work better than swallowing the pills. Did it for one today, didn’t notice any relief in the heartburn.
I would add this: if you have just a headboard attached to a frame and you want to incline the whole bed with blocks, disconnect the headboard from the frame, on top of everything else, you don’t need the headboard smacking you in the noggin or possibly falling on top of you if the wood splits where the bolts hold it on.
The frame I described wasn’t cheap, but it works like a charm if I’m not stupid (Choco chip cookies after 6PM is a no-no.). What works best for me is having the big meal of the day before 3PM and only mild drinks after that (maybe a small, bland snack no later than 8PM, if I’m hitting the sack at 11PM).
ETA: forgot to mention, Bed, Bath & Beyond has a set (4) of solid, oak blocks with indentations in the top for putting under the frame wheels–should work with bedposts, too.
