What I hate to Hear From a Doctor

There are many things we don’t like to hear from our doctors. Besides the give, bad news like you have cancer or time for your rectal exam. Being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia along with acid reflux LPR there is one thing they tend to say at a visit that I cringe over.

Let’s Try A New Medication!

With Fibro it can be a long trial and error finding a medication or cocktail of meds that help you. Meanwhile it’s always a new set of side effects to go through as your body gets used to it. Then starting over when it does nothing or makes things worse.

This time around it’s my acid reflux that’s causing a change and the lucky candidate is… Dexilant!

Latest Endoscopy Results

I went in for an annual endoscopy a few weeks ago and only thing I remember coming out of the anesthesia was that he wanted me to double my Pantoprazole on top of my evening ranitidine. Mentioned that saw something as well and scheduled me for ultrasound and blood test for my liver. Now when I was fully awake this didn’t stress me at all, nooooo.

Well after getting those things done I had my follow up visit this last week. Good news is liver is fine, just slightly enlarged but that may be from other meds (going to chat with other doctors). The thing was that he saw was what they call Esophagel Varices which is the enlarging of the smaller blood vessels in the esophagus.  Kinda like varicose veins in the leg I guess (ewwww). This is sometimes caused by liver problems backing up blood flow. So they have no idea what is cause it then. (another thing I don’t like to hear from a doctor)

Anyway the other things he saw was erosion of the stomach lining and increase erosion and irritation in the throat. The good news was that the Barrett’s is stable and no advancement.

Oh Ya, The New Medication

So the big thing is to continue to try and decrease the acid production to allow the throat to heal and since the Pantoprazole, Prilosec and ranitidine were not doing the trick she decided we should try this relatively new medication. Now besides what I mentioned above, whenever they say ‘new drug’ one of two things pop in my head. Either it’s not covered by insurance or the co-pay is way to high for me. So I left with a bunch of samples to try for two weeks and if they actually help then she thinks we can push it through insurance since the others haven’t helped and being on them for so long.

Dexilant is still a PPI drug like the others but has an immediate release as well as a delayed release and lasts for 24 hrs. It has also been noted to be more effective than the others so I’m giving it a try. It does have a few benefits, for one only one pill instead of 3 a day and the other is I don’t have to time it with meals.

Oh and it comes in a pretty blue.