GERD Dammit!

The Old Lady's out of town 'til Sunday night, so it's me, the Spawnage and Cujo for the entire weekend. I can already taste the stomach acid bubbling up into the back of my throat.

Literally.

A couple of months before we moved to the Mitten, back in "aught four," I started getting some really heinous reflux. I'd wake up in the middle of the night feeling like Fred G. Sanford having "the biggie," which freaked me the shit out until I finally went to a gastro doc who said it was most likely reflux. Just to be sure, he knocked me out, snaked a tube down my esophagus and, when I woke up, I was pregnant. No, wait... wrong story.

When I woke up, he said I had GERD, or Gastro-Esophogeal Reflux Disease. Better known as heartburn. And it didn't take no highfalutin' poo-poo doctor to tell me that I was getting it because I was stressed out. Then again, I get stressed out if my morning bowel movement arrives a few minutes late, so...

The doc prescribed me some Zegerid, the magic anti-reflux pill, and I've been GERD-free (as free as the wind blows...) ever since. That is, until it kicked back into high gear last week. I started waking up with the burn-y, scratchy throat, and my teeth hurt and it felt like someone was cranking a car jack on my sternum, from the inside. You know, the usual.

So now I'm stalking around like fucking Columbo, trying to figure out what the shit is causing it. Is it from the all the wine we've been drinking with dinner, lately? Maybe. Was it all the rich foodstuffs I crammed into my facepipe over Xmas break? Perhaps. Did the dog shit in my mouth while I was sleeping? Probably.

Whatever the reason, I'm doing all this fucked up shit to try to fix it. I'm sleeping on a bunch of pillows so my head is higher than my stomach. Does it help? Well, if fucking up my lower back beyond repair is helping, then yes. I'm downing handfuls of Gaviscon at bed which is supposed to form some foamy barrier in front of one of my many faulty sphincters to keep the acid from a-backin' on up. I don't know if that's helping but, between all the aluminum and sodium it has in it, I'll be too worried about my early-onset Alzheimer's and my gigantic goiter to care about some goddamn reflux.

I'm also analyzing every fucking thing I put in my mouth. Can I eat a grape? Hmm... I don't know. Grapes could be the culprit. Better not! How about an apple? That could either fix it or burn a hole in my esophagus. Tough call. I think I'll just play it safe and eat three sleeves of saltines and drink a jar of pickle juice... from now until I die.

Which may just be sometime between now and Sunday night.