The Great GERD Mystery

Today I'm feeling: Good.

Ran 2 miles this morning -- my first run since the 5k on Sunday. My legs had been hurting a little bit, so I took it easy today. I actually did some weight lifting yesterday. Again, nothing too heavy. It had been almost 2 months since I'd done any lifting, and I figured I should get back into it, if only because I really don't want my shoulders to fall asleep next time I have a PET scan.

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I had a follow-up appointment with the Gastro doctor on Monday.

A little background: I turned 40 on June 8th. It was a Friday. The following Monday, I went to see the doctor about my bronchitis. (I maintain that once I turned 40, I started to fall apart.) Over the next month and a half, I went back two more times because the bronchitis wasn't going away. In late July, while on vacation with Isabel's family, I could barely make it up the stairs without losing my breath, so I saw a doctor and was diagnosed with pneumonia.

It cleared up fine, and then in October, I started feeling a kind of shortness of breath again, more like a tightness in my chest behind my sternum. I had an x-ray and a CT scan, and the doctor sent me to a Pulminary specialist. He gave me a breath test, which didn't turn up any problems, and my blood oxygen levels were good. (I was still running during this time with no problems.) The CT scan showed a spot on my lung and an irregularity in a lymph node in my chest. He was fairly certain all of that was left over from the pneumonia. We scheduled a follow-up CT scan for January to make sure the node was going back to normal.

In the meantime, he asked me to keep track of when I was feeling that breathlessness/tightness. It became obvious pretty quickly that I was getting that feeling about an hour after I ate. The symptoms were consistent with GERD, Gastro-Esophogeal Reflux Disorder. I was put on Nexium and sent to a Gastro specialist.

Eventually, I had an Upper GI endoscopy done, so the Gastro doctor could look at my esophogus and stomach. Everything looked OK on the scope. (In fact, I had the scope done the day I heard about the NHL diagnosis.)

When I met with the Gastro doctor on Monday, he said it seemed like there were two issues going on at once: I definitely had symptoms of reflux, and I'll stay on the Nexium. But he couldn't find any explanation for the breathless/tightness feeling.

I asked if it could be related to the swollen lymph node in my chest, and he agreed that it could be, though he wouldn't say for sure because that's not his area of expertise. Well, in my reading over the last few days, I've found that it's a common symptom of NHL to have a node in the chest swollen enough so that it bumps the trachea or other things in the chest and gives those feelings of breathlessness or tightness.

Fascinating. It seems the mystery may be solved. It's obviously not affecting my lungs (the 5k proved that), but it feels like it is.

And while that's still not confirmed, it's nice to have something close to an answer for why I've felt that way for a few months. I can't blame anyone for a misdiagnosis; the lymph node swelling after pneumonia is a very reasonable explanation, and the other GERD symptoms were there, too. And already having heard about one irregular lymph node from October, I was prepared to leap into action when another one popped up -- lots of people may have just ignored it. Runners get swollen nodes all the time from leg injuries, from what I've read, and they're usually dismissed as part of the lifestyle.

So, in a sense, my chicken-wing-habit-induced GERD might have helped me catch the NHL a little earlier than I might have otherwise. Thank you, my weak esophogus!!!!