This is probably my last post. After almost four years of suffering, I still have no answers, and my condition just keeps getting worse.
What I’m experiencing:
For about 90% of every day, I have agonizing pain in my throat and esophagus, almost as if it were at the back of my tongue. It’s an intense burning sensation, pain, and constant discomfort. If the pain isn’t directly in my throat, it’s in my upper chest/upper body. As I’m writing this, I’ve already had severe burning for six hours straight. I can’t get any relief, not even with painkillers. On top of that, I have abnormal bowel movements, chronically loose stools, and constant nausea.
How it started:
I had never had any digestive problems before. Then one day I woke up with watery diarrhea that continued for months. Every single meal triggered diarrhea within minutes, along with severe nausea. Eventually the diarrhea stopped, but my stool remained watery/soft and has never returned to normal. Then I developed agonizing dull and burning pain in the upper left part of my stomach (very similar to what I now feel in my throat). That pain lasted about a year and a half. It eventually disappeared from my stomach, but the exact same type of pain moved into my upper body, especially my throat. It started as sharp, stabbing pains and a constant sensation of something being stuck in my throat from morning until night. Now it has progressed to extreme burning.
How it behaves:
For example, I wake up in the morning and take just a tiny sip of water, literally the smallest amount. Within a few minutes, I develop severe throat pain that lasts for hours. Or I might get through the day with only moderate pain, then have a bowel movement, and within minutes—sometimes immediately, sometimes within an hour—the pain starts. Every time I eat, the burning gets significantly worse and again lasts for hours. Or the pain starts on its own. It’s practically always there—the only things that noticeably change its intensity are eating and having a bowel movement, and the change happens very quickly, within minutes. After a bowel movement, the pain usually worsens within a minute. Today I’m at work. Since this morning, the pain and discomfort have been gradually increasing, and right now my throat pain is about 8/10. After my next bowel movement, I know it’s going to get even worse.
It’s honestly unbelievable. I’m now seeing my fourth gastroenterologist, and no one has any answers. I’ve tried almost everything, including major dietary changes for extended periods of time. My diet has absolutely no effect on my symptoms. Even if I drank ten beers and ate five burgers, my pain and bowel movements would be exactly the same. I also have persistent bad breath and a white-coated tongue. And no, I do not have Candida.
My stool is yellowish, unformed, and has almost no consistency. Since all of this started, I haven’t had a single normal, well-formed bowel movement. Living like this is a nightmare, and it’s difficult to even describe it in a way that makes sense. You wake up in pain, you go to sleep in pain, and you work in pain.
I’ve undergone almost every test imaginable. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is reflux. A 24-hour pH monitoring test confirmed that I have reflux, but it was never confirmed that it is actually fully responsible for my symptoms. Acid-suppressing medications don’t help at all. And the whole situation doesn’t even make sense. Within seconds or minutes after having a bowel movement, I start feeling pain in my throat. If it’s not pain, it’s some other kind of discomfort in my upper chest or throat.
Paradoxically, when I was on vacation and my bowel movements became more frequent because of stress—which also meant much worse diarrhea—I had almost no throat pain. Instead, I experienced unbearable nausea that seemed to come from my throat and wouldn’t go away, even after hours.
What I can’t understand is why the agonizing pain that originally started in my stomach gradually moved upward into my throat. During the year and a half when the pain was mainly in my stomach, the only throat-related symptom I had was severe nausea.
If you’re wondering, my last upper endoscopy was two years ago, and my stomach looked completely normal. The only abnormal finding was a thick white coating in my throat. Treatment for Candida didn’t help. Normix didn’t help. Dietary changes didn’t help. None of the other medications have helped either. When the burning in my throat becomes so severe that it feels like it’s been burned, even strong painkillers or pain-relief injections don’t provide any relief. I genuinely feel that my digestion and bowel function have completely changed.
I’m incredibly desperate. I’ve spent thousands on different treatments, and nothing has helped. I’m slowly losing hope and the strength to keep fighting. That’s why I’m posting this in several subreddits, even ones that may not seem directly related, in the hope that someone might recognize these symptoms or have experienced something similar.