It's my body's half birthday and my new swallowing mechanism is five weeks old. Sounds like a good time to check in. If you're just tuning in, I had surgery in February to address achalasiaAs previously reported, I took the week of surgery off from work. This was a really good move: even though I was feeling a lot better than I'd expected (and ( Read more... )

Surgery was a success, and recovery has been smoother than I had imagined.

On Monday, I had a laparoscopic Heller myotomy and fundoplication. It was performed at Swedish Medical Center in Englewood by Dr. Reginald Bell, Nurse Practitioner Kate Freeman, and an anesthetist whose name I very quickly forgot.

My almost eery sense of calm about the ( Read more... )

Close to two months ago, my weight was hovering just about 110 pounds ( Read more... )

I've been surprisingly calm about my achalasia surgery tomorrow ( Read more... )

The last time you heard from my esophagus, dear readers, it was freshly diagnosed with achalasia, a condition wherein the lower esophageal sphincter doesn't relax to let food into the stomach and the esophagus doesn't effectively squeeze to push food down. The result was that food would often build up at the bottom of the esophagus until it ( Read more... )

Despite a long-time hope that my jaw would remain whole, I accepted prudent dental advice and had all four wisdom teeth extracted last Friday. They were all pointing in unhelpful directions, endangering the future of my more useful chompers ( Read more... )