quite a stretch

a few years ago i was nursing isaac when i heard some ungodly sounds coming from the family room. dave came running in with a panicked look on his face. i laid isaac down on the floor and asked dave what was happening--he was choking. seriously, truly, not breathing kind of choking. he had tried to swallow a pill and it got stuck. just as i was about to call 911 it went down and he could breathe. it was terrifying. after teaching me the heimlich for someone bigger than me, we made a call to a gastrointerologist to scope his esophagus because he'd been having trouble getting food down, and i had a cousin who had to have his esophagus stretched every now and then. dr. desautels, who (whom?) i really like, stretched it, but it was so small in diameter that it ripped, and dave couldn't eat meat for 2 months (he actually lost quite a bit of weight during that time....makes you think, eh?). dr. d said his was one of the smallest he'd ever seen and he wasn't sure how he had been swallowing at all. cut to almost 4 years later, and dave has been choking again. not as bad as before, but it takes him almost an hour to eat his food because he has to take tiny bites and chew forever. so we took him back to have it done again yesterday...only it was so small the doc couldn't even get the scope down, let alone the balloon that stretches it out. and the scope is about half the size of a pinky finger. he said a normal esophagus is about the size of a big marshmallow. dave's is about the size of a tiny marshmallow or maybe smaller. again, he said "i don't know how you've been managing as well as you have."

he was diagnosed with eosinophilic esophagitis, probably caused by allergies and asthma, and is now on a steroid and an acid blocker to see if they can reduce the swelling and get it big enough for a scope to go down and stretch it out a little. the risk is high for another tear when they stretch it out...poor guy.

what's weird is my brothers both have the same symptoms of this, although they haven't been diagnosed with ee, and i've been having some problems swallowing lately too...though nothing like dave. the doc said they rarely saw this 5 years ago but it's coming increasingly more common, probably because of something environmental or something in food. it's hard to pinpoint the allergen that's causing it because we eat so much stuff. red meat alone has over 1,000 different things in it (chemicals? can't remember) so finding out what allergy is causing it is hard.

in the meantime, the steroid should help reduce the inflammation (and i imagine won't hurt his daily workouts) and no meat--flaky fish is okay though. so send your fish recipes my way.