Erosive Esophagitis

Howdy. My esophagus has been bothering me all day today. This is the second time I have had this problem in my life, and it's more annoying than anything else.

Every night before I go to bed, I take two pills. Last night I didn't use enough water to swallow them, and since I went to bed directly after swallowing them, there wasn't enough gravity to get them to fall all the way down my esophagus into my stomach. So, I woke up at around 4:30 or 5 with this horrible pain in my esophagus. It felt like the worst heartburn you can imagine. As I mentioned, this has happened to me once before, several years ago. At that time I had no idea what was wrong, so I went to the emergency room. I felt kind of stupid going there, but I was in a lot of inexplicable pain, and it was the middle of the night. They gave me this oral anesthetic stuff that I swallowed, and it numbed my esophagus. That made things feel much better.

So, this time around, I knew what was going on. I didn't need to go to the ER, or even see a doctor, because I had experienced it before. So, I got up and drank a lot of water. That helped a little, but I could tell that my esophagus was still inflamed, and it felt like the pills might still be stuck in there. So, I had a brilliant idea - I made some oatmeal. That helped, because it sticks to your throat and kind of coats things. Plus, it's hot. So, if there was any pill left in my esophagus, the oatmeal pretty much took care of it. But, my throat has been uncomfortable all day. Every time I swallow it feels like I have something stuck in my throat.

I decided to look it up, to see if this is a common thing. Turns out it kind of is. At least, it's common enough that I found something about it in less than a minute.

One website I found has endoscopic pictures of this condition.  It's kind of interesting.  If the discomfort doesn't go away, I suppose I'll have to go see a doctor.  But, I'm pretty sure that my "condition" isn't bad enough to warrant it at this point.  We'll see.  Maybe I should just start taking my pills in the morning.  That would solve the problem completely.  Duh.  The only problem is changing my habits.  It's easier to do right before bed, for some reason.  I have no idea why.

So. Yeah. That's what my day has been like. Ha ha. It's actually been a really nice day, to tell the truth. I read my book a lot, slept a lot, went to the movies, and just generally took it easy. It's been raining all day, which is always a nice change. I usually hate the rain, but here it's always welcome, because it is so rare. I thought it didn't rain much in Utah, but it REALLY doesn't rain much here. Even during "monsoon season" we don't get a lot of rainstorms. Mostly we just get really violent ones that dump huge amounts of water all at once. And then the rest of the time is hot and dry. So, these winter rain storms are kind of nice. Not too violent, just nice drizzles all day.

Anyhoo. This post is pretty random, but I was starting to feel guilty about not writing for a while, especially since I started a blog for my work - so I've got blgging on the brain again. Maybe that will translate into more posts on here. You never know . . .