Hiatus Hernia

I got the results of my endoscopy back last Friday and it turns out I have a hiatial hernia. In essence, this means that the opening of my diaphragm between my chest and abdominal cavities is too big, thus allowing part of my stomach to protrude into my esophagus. With this condition then the acid produced in my stomach is left with a nice passageway into my esophagus. Oftentimes in cases of hiatial hernias the patient suffers from frequent and severe heartburn. In my case I have only on occasion experienced heartburn but rather something riled up my stomach to produce more acid (perhaps something in my diet) and then caused damage to my stomach lining which resulted in the pain. Although this news isn’t the most welcome, I’m glad the endoscopy produced a diagnosis. I wouldn’t have wanted to go through that procedure for nothing. Now I’m on some prescription-strength antacids to help heal my stomach and so far so good. The PCMO would like me to stay on them at least until I leave and then once I’m home I can try to wean off of them and maybe figure out what my triggers are so I can better control my diet.

In other news- I may have mentioned in a previous post that I was grateful that winter was here. Umm, yeah. Scratch that. It’s freezing this year! For the past two weeks or so the temperatures have been dropping into the upper 20′s and lower 30′s at night- yeah, that’s Fahrenheit. I know because I’ve three times in the last week been up and out the door by 6:45 and found frost on the ground and read the plunging numbers on my thermometer. Frost! I can’t remember there ever being a frost last year. During the day it gets up to 65-ish but it still feels really cold unless I’m sitting in the sun. Once the sun sets it just gets painful. My gogo has been starting fires outside and then bringing in the hot coals on a three-legged cast iron platter type thingy. It’s awesome, we all huddle around it trying to warm our hands and feet. Once the coals cool down I come back to my room and turn on my space heater. Last year I was adamant about not buying a space heater and I did just fine. This year, it had to happen. I just hope it doesn’t get any colder!