Went off antacids after 4mo. and pain immediately came back...

[a14]

I've been suppressing my HA for a couple of months but I'm just loaded down with worry again. Back in October of last year I started having a stinging pain in my mid right abdomen that went away for a while if I would eat something...doctor put me on a PPI in case it was a duodenal ulcer. Said if it was, it would take 6-8 weeks to heal. Well, I stayed on the meds for twice that long, eventually didn't have the pain anymore (although started having an unrelated pain in roughly the same area that comes and goes and gives me terrible HA grief every few weeks), but I ran out of refills for the meds and decided to go off of them anyway because prolonged use can promote dangerous bacterial growth in the stomach.

Well, now I'm back to all of my old GI fears because going off of my antacids has caused the symptoms to come right back after four months...reflux, and whenever I experience that, I get the pain in my mid right abdomen that I was hoping was just an ulcer four months ago...it's been twice as long as it takes for an ulcer to heal, so it's clearly not that, and now I'm terrified over it actually being something worse since it apparently didn't heal...I know it's irrational, that I haven't had any other symptoms this whole time, but it can't just be nothing. I'm especially scared since I've been reading up on the carcinogenic properties of cured meats and I've been eating them almost constantly for the past three years...feel like even if something isn't wrong, I've already put myself on an irreversible track toward something.

I don't know if there's such a thing as acid reflux rebound when you first go off of the meds and things return to normal eventually, but this stinging pain on top of the reflux in the same exact spot that it was months ago makes me worry that rebound isn't my only problem. If I'm still having reflux after giving my stomach four months to heal should I see a doctor? Am I being unreasonable? Please help......I have no clue what to do. Thanks all.

[vardnas]

Can you go back to the prescribing doc and see what he has to say? That, I believe, would be a good place to start.

I doubt very much it's anything more serious than an ulcer, if that's even what's going on. I CANNOT imagine that eating cured meats for three years gave you cancer (I drank L.A. tap water for about that long, and I'm still here), and sitting there reading about it is not helping your case.

Anxiety can pull a doozy with digestion (I'm not saying that's your only problem, but I guarantee it's exacerbating whatever is going on). Doctors are not great at understanding this link somehow and tend to over-prescribe drugs like PPIs, which can do more harm than good for an anxious stomach. Every nutritionist I've ever been to has told me that oftentimes, anxiety leads the stomach to under-produce acid instead of over-produce, the symptoms of which are exactly the same (which is very confusing). I doubt that's what's going on, since the PPI stopped the pain.

But, first off, take a deep breath, STOP looking up health information online, make a follow-up appointment with that doctor and, if you haven't already done so, make some arrangements to start treating your ANXIETY.

[a14]

Thanks for your answer...I definitely felt better after reading it. Anything GI-related, even slight, sends me into horrible panic and I don't think clearly. Well, after reading about "acid rebound" from PPIs (where going off of them after months or years of use actually causes an increase in stomach acid) I had to go back on them for now because the pain was unbearable. I'll have to taper down over time, which I suppose is acceptable. My doctor has taken over a week to get back to me on whether or not I should see him again which is very frustrating, so I have to take my health into my own hands until I can get in touch.

I'd be feeling better except that yesterday, after having some of the worst reflux of my life, I began to have absolutely excruciating pain in my chest and back like I'd been stabbed with something...swallowing food became painful so I could only assume that my esophagus had been damaged from a day of severe reflux. If I breathed deeply, the pain got worse, which I assume is from my lungs putting pressure on my raw and painful esophagus. The chest pain is gone today, but the back pain is still sharp if I inhale deeply...I keep telling myself that it can't be anything since the pain only started a day ago and correlates with something obvious, but organ pain referred to the back is a warning sign for most of the things I fear the most so I'm not convinced something is wrong, it's just making me think about those fears again. I started to google today but forced myself not to. I'll be much happier if the pain is gone completely tomorrow.

[trainwreck]

First of all be persistent in getting in touch with your doc.
Rebound reflux is very common.  My doc is of the belief that GERD is a self-resolving thing and only has me take meds when it flares up.

As for your throat, it only takes a bit of irritation to be extremely painful.  I felt like I was being literally stabbed in the throat and back when swallowing.  Had an endoscope, esophagus  was just "mildly irritated". 

[a14]

First of all be persistent in getting in touch with your doc.
Rebound reflux is very common.  My doc is of the belief that GERD is a self-resolving thing and only has me take meds when it flares up.

As for your throat, it only takes a bit of irritation to be extremely painful.  I felt like I was being literally stabbed in the throat and back when swallowing.  Had an endoscope, esophagus  was just "mildly irritated".

Thanks for the reassurance on my back pain, that's what's really scaring me the most today. I do think it's referred pain from my esophagus, and I'm really trying to let the logical part of my mind prevail by telling myself that this pain began when I had horrible reflux yesterday and will need time to go away. I know the cause so I should be able to exclude anything malevolent, but that's how my mind works. Even if it's not c, I worry that maybe I dissolved a hole in my esophagus and it's going to get infected or it's going to bleed out, but that's ridiculous too. They're just thoughts plaguing me, even if it's not what I realistically believe...such a pain.