Everything is a trigger and I’m tired of it
I’ve had this acid reflux for well over a year now. It started after a very bad green out on an edible and shortly after that I got acute gastritis, a cold/flu, my period, AND acid reflux all at the same time. (This happened in January 20th. The green out was the 5th) Ever since then I have been struggling with food and drinks. I never smoke or drink alcohol, and I manage my anxiety and stress pretty well. I got put on Pantoprozol (20mg) and that caused me MAJOR mental distress so I had to quickly change to Rabeprozol (20mg) 1/day. While the medication helped my gastritis to go away, the burning in my throat persisted, and was HORRENDOUSLY BAD. I lived on buttered toast, raisin bran cereal, oat milk, water, and rice for 6-7months. I lost insane amounts of weight; went from 137 lbs to 108 lbs in the span of 1-3 months. It was awful. No doctors back in Canada would help me; my own family doctor told me to “it sounds like acid reflux from stress. manage your stress the best way you can. Have a good one”, and completely ignored my complaints and symptoms. Never even bothered to look at my throat for the bare minimum. I got tested for H.Pylori via blood test and stool and it was negative, and was denied for a endoscopy/colonoscopy because I’m “young”. (Turning 30 this year)
Jump to recent months, I was able to eat and drink more things when I moved to Australia to be with my husband. I could drink coffee again, eat more food, have even mc Donald’s on occasion and everything it was wonderful. But the 100% guarantee triggers were anything with sucralose, spicy food, and sour candy. No problem, I’ll avoid those right? WRONG.
Cut to present day and I’m now back to square one and worse. I no longer can drink water, milk, dairy free breakfast drinks,tea, anything without my throat lighting on fire. ESPECIALLY if I don’t have food to eat with it. If I eat and drink, it’s no problem. Food? Everything is becoming a trigger. It’s now at the point where I give up on food and am starving myself because there’s just no point to life if I can’t enjoy snacks and meals or anything. I’m now trying to battle dehydration, critically low phosphate, and burning throat that’s so bad it feels like someone lit a match and shoved it down my throat. The only thing that gives me relief is when go to bed at night and sleep. I wake up the next day like nothing happened and it’s frustrating. I don’t have permanent residency here in Australia so finding a doctor is going to be hard and costly and I’m at a complete loss… I’d rather die than keep having this burning throat haunting me.
TL;DR: I have extremely bad burning throat from acid reflux with no other symptoms, everything is a trigger and I don’t know what to do anymore.