A month ago I spent an afternoon in a Richmond (VCU) Emergency Room. As I had done three times in the previous month, I got something stuck in my throat. My acid reflux had inflamed my throat. I forgot to thoroughly chew a piece of apple, and I choked. I tried to throw it up for three hours. I tried to relax. But it just stayed there. I was getting dehydrated. I had a hour and half commute home. I was making a fool of myself. I had to do something. The ladies in the office were concerned. The emergency room was two blocks away. So I went.
Once I "sign in" to the emergency room, I swallow the apple to a point where I am not regurgitating, and I can swallow water. I keep asking if I should leave, because there are some really sick people there. The nurses, all say "stay." I am in an emergency room with a number of sick prisoners from local jails, correction officers assigned to watch them, and state troopers investigating traumatic accidents. The orderlies and maintenance workers are discussing their sexual exploits and what they would like to do with some of the student nurses. I do not want to "stay." But I do, and it will cost me a few hundred dollars.
Earlier in the day I drank black coffee from Starbucks. This has always had a detrimental effect on my acid reflux. My stress level was high. This has always had a detrimental effect on my acid reflux. I had choked three times in the previous month. I started taking Prilosec again, but it clearly wasn't solving the problem. It was just helping mask the symptoms and the real causes. It was just helping maintain my bad habits of black coffee and stress.
Most of life is habit. If you step back and evaluate most of your daily decisions, they involve some type of "rule of thumb," some type of decision rule based on experience and past information. Black coffee wakes me up. Writing this blog makes me feel better and helps me avoid other things I have to do.
Some bad habits are necessary. But a successful life involves overcoming bad habits and replacing them with less bad habits. This is what I am trying to do, and that has to be good enough.
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2 comments:
I was talking with my mom about how there are so many people with acid reflux in the US now compared to 50 years ago. She wonders if it doesn't have something to do with being the antibiotic generation. There was an article not long ago about how bacterial cells (mostly beneficial) out number human cells in the body 10 to 1. Perhaps in killing strep infections we are also causing other problems by changing the ecology of bacteria in our body. I don't know what we can do besides avoiding antibiotics unless we absolutely need them and eating more yogurt.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/15/0252219&from=rss
The antibiotics thing worries me to.
But I also think it just a diagnosis issue. I am convinced that my grandfather and probably most men in my family had acid reflux, but it just wasn't diagnosed. They just ate Tums like they were candy.
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