Batten down the hatches

My esophageal sphincter keeps getting stuck open. I can tell. The way I know is that a lot of air gets into my stomach and I burp uncomfortably and I can feel stuff that should be in my stomach rising into places it shouldn’t. When the air gets into my stomach, when my stomach breathes with my lungs, I feel hungry and nothing makes me feel full. Never feeling full is an irritating feeling because I never feel satisfied.

The last time I saw my gastroenterologist, we talked about the neuroscience of the digestive system. He said the digestive tract is just a really rudimentary brain. This makes sense to me. We talked about how I’m unhappy lately and that upsets my digestion, and how my upset digestion contributes to my unhappiness. The way he said it was “No one’s happy when they can’t poop.”

He’s a funny guy. He reminds me of some kind of wacky 80’s doctor wilded out on coke. But I don’t think he actually is. I think his digestive brain is so happy that his actual brain gets happy on it too.

My rheumatologist said, “Did you get scoped?” meaning, “Did you have a colonoscopy?”

I said, “No,” and shook my head.

He said, “How did you go to a gastroenterologist and not get scoped?” with wide-eyed amazement.

“He’s a cool guy. He said: ‘I don’t wanna go in there, and you don’t want me to go in there, so let’s not do it, OK?” Fine by me.

The rheumatologist then talked to me about the neuroscience of joint pain and how an unhappy brain causes stress on the body which causes pain which causes stress on the brain which causes unhappiness.

So what’s up with this cycle? My esophageal sphincter is stuck open, so I use my fist to massage it down by rolling my knuckles down the base of my sternum. Some people suggest using mental imagery to see the door closing on your esophageal sphincter. I don’t get into that stuff. My rheumatologist hinted that I needed to relax and get stage 4 sleep to close my door on joint pain. I agree with all these things, but my brain still hurts and my body still hurts and I can’t get out of that rut. I imagine a giant silver fist punching through a circle of cartoon images of my bodily and psychic aches and shattering them into little jagged pieces.

What is my silver fist? What will punch through the circle of ouch?

Sometimes I think it’s meditation or guided imagery, but then I try to meditate and I freakin’ hate it. So I bet that’s the answer. Cough medicine is gross, but it helps; ergo, meditation is dull, but it will work.

I gotta find my “Om” face to punch my fist into a new hole where light can get in. I’ll make that my guided imagery.


(My bad. I was taking too much arthritis medicine AND Tylenol. Too many NSAIDs. Causes the esophageal sphincter to relax too much. Feeling much better now that I've cut out the Tylenol.)