ANA Discussion Forum
Post-Treatment => Post-Treatment => Topic started by: sunfish on December 28, 2010, 09:48:10 am
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Moderators - move this wherever you think I'll get the best response. Didn't know where to post
I had CK last March. Within a week of treatment, I had an episode where I was eating meat, and all of a sudden I felt the bite wouldn't go down my esophagus (stuck) and had terrible chest pain. Because I'd struggled with high blood pressure, thought I was having heart attack. Well, after several seconds the problem passed, and I swallowed OK. I went to after hours clinic that night due to high blood pressure, and they put me on meds but didn't address swallowing problems.
I've had minor incidents of this since, but not nearly that extreme until last night. Same sort of episode while eating roast beef last night, bite wouldn't go down, terrible chest pain for about a minute and a half. Lots of heartburn recently, some new meds over the past month. Have any of you had similar experiences before/after treatment, especially with radiosurgery? I'm suspicious that my blood pressure and swallowing difficulties could be due to problems with other cranial nerves (glossopharyngeal or vagus). I'm starting to feel like some sort of crazy hypochondriac.
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Sounds like esophogeal spasm and probably not nerve related. I have had some occ issues with it. Had one real bad spell after taking an antibiotic and had to change meds. Make sure and take small bites of meat and do mention it to a dr. The odds are it is a GI issue and not CK related but never say never! Cheryl R
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Swallowing difficulties are a low-occurrence possibility with surgery, I have no idea about CK. I have swallowing difficulties because of the nerve involvement from my tumor and surgery. There is pretty decent article on Wikipedia about the mechanisms of swallowing that may help you understand what you experienced and this may help in following Cheryl's advice about mentioning it to your doctor which I strongly recommend.
If you do have an ongoing problem, there are coping mechanisms which mostly involve small bites, chewing everything very well, small sips of liquid with each bite for dry foods, and so on.
Good luck and let us know what your doc says.
-Tod
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That sounds very scary and I hope thats the end of it. I went from being able to swallow 10+ pills before surgery to struggling w/ swallowing 1 after surgery. Thankfullly that gradually improved over the following weeks. Now I'm back to swallowing a handful of vitamins. Good luck!