One way or another, I need a cure

[Orange Lightning]

Please, please, please help. I've never had so many dark thoughts in my life. I'm pretty certain I have LPR (silent reflux) and it's really affecting my quality of life from the moment I wake up to the moment I (in theory) fall asleep. Food is half of anybody's quality of life, as I'm sure we all know, so having to restrict myself in what I eat is terrible.

I suffer from symptoms like a burning throat, mucus, gas stuck in the throat, a sore/raw throat and a lump in the throat. While you could attribute some of these to anxiety, the fact is I'm anxious all day, every day, wondering when my suffering is going to get worse. It all points to LPR reflux. Excercise makes me worse - even standing up makes me belch - and even on the strictest reflux diet, with alkaline water and nothing acidic at all for at least 4 months, I have yet to improve. Antidepressents, reflux medications and lifestyle changes do nothing either.

I'm only 22 - I can't go on for another potential 60+ years like this. I've been doing my best to convince my family and GP to help, but nobody believes me, in fact they're stripping me of my medication and forcing me to eat a "normal" diet, going so far as to dig through my possessions to make sure I'm not buying any medication behind their backs. Everyone thinks I'm trying to "crave attention" or that I'm "a compulsive liar." They always play the "some people suffer much more than you" card, but I have to suffer without ANY relief every day and with the potential of things developing into a terminal, incurable cancer; at least other people can ease their suffering one way or another. I refuse to suffer any longer like this, but I can't afford to pay to see a specialist in private and NHS queues are at least 4 months long. So all that keeps running through my head is how to... well, die. And that's the quickest way I could relieve my endless suffering, right?

I don't have it in me to take any life, least of all my own, but my family once caught me typing a post like this and scolded me rather than helped me. For as long as I have to watch everything I eat, drink and do in life, I can never truly be happy, especially when I have to suffer debilitating pain every day. Surely I have an excuse to end myself for this? The though scares me though...

Please help, what can I do? I'm already undergoing CBT and I can't escape the fact I'm going to suffer like this for many, many years unless it somehow can ALL be caused by anxiety.


EDIT: Even right now, when I was typing this post I got symptoms. Why me?!

[nomorepanic]

Have you been diagnosed with this or you found it on google and the symptoms match?

[Stormsky]

Hi
I suffered reflux at the height of my anxiety, and the more I concentrated on it, the worse it seemed to get.. Went to docs a few times..always felt my food wasn't going down , getting stuck.. Doc just kept saying take gaviscone !
So I gave up with docs... But it went away when I stopped worrying about it strangely...
Life is so short, dying is not an option. Your 22 , it will get better!
Talk to your cbt therapist, don't keep these thoughts to yourself..

[Orange Lightning]

Have you been diagnosed with this or you found it on google and the symptoms match?

It's a diagnosis from a few tests I've had, sadly.

[nomorepanic]

Sorry do you mean you DO have it and it has been officially diagnosed?

[Orange Lightning]

Sorry do you mean you DO have it and it has been officially diagnosed?

My bad ^^; Yeah, one doctor and my counceller say I do, although a different doctor said I didn't have it. Since the latter hadn't heard of LPR though, it IS 2 against 1.

[nomorepanic]

Ok thanks

I don't know much about it - what is the treatment?

[Orange Lightning]

Ok thanks

I don't know much about it - what is the treatment?

All that can be done is to alter diets and lifestyle, take Gaviscon Advance/Double PPIs if these work on you and then suck up the rest of it. Unfortunately there's no permanent cure, and the pepsin that gets stuck in the throat from LPR eventually causes cancer in many LPR victims according to one study I got hold of.

[nomorepanic]

Ok well I guess you need to try the diet and lifestyle things first.

[Orange Lightning]

Ok well I guess you need to try the diet and lifestyle things first.

Oh yeah, I already have been for at least 4 months. They include changes like raising the bed head, no late snacks, not lying down after food etc. The diet is called Dr Kouffman's Reflux Diet; it only has about 25 types of food but none are fatty or above ph 5-6. It's stupidly restricted but it's the only thing that even slightly works. Except for the alkaline water which for some reason makes me worse, probably because it mixes with acid and refluxes with it.