Dr Pepper . . . My Prescription

Something was wrong, I could hardly swallow. I was puking and my esophagus was stuffed. The only thing that could help relieve me was a Dr. Pepper. “He needs to go to Cox Hospital and they can help him,” said our family doctor. So here I am in the hospital, waiting, for something called a barium swallow.
“Now, this white stuff will show us why your stomach is rejecting food,” said the lead doctor. “It doesn’t taste that bad,” said a friendly looking nurse. So I lay down on a table and it started to move up like when Darth Vader rises on the table, until I was standing. There I saw a team of doctors standing in front of me.
After the x-ray we saw the results. With the sour, sweet, chalky taste still in my mouth I saw my chest on the screen. The white stuff was oozing into my stomach like molasses. Then we did the x-ray again and I chugged a Dr. Pepper and suddenly the white stuff disappeared like a deer being shot at. So the doctors said you need to drink stuff that’s carbonated to help get food down. Soda! How often does a doctor tell you that! Eat slowly and go somewhere else like St. Louis Children’s Hospital of Kansas City Children’s Mercy Hospital.
So we drove to St. Louis and I slept halfway there. After waiting an hour we saw a doctor. We watched the x-ray and said I had Achalasia (ache-a-lay-shay), Greek for failure in the esophagus. The doctor said that we could get something called a Heller-Myotomy or have a balloon procedure, that they preferred, that would open up the muscle that was the problem. We said, “We’ll come back”
The problem was there is a muscle in your esophagus that closes to stop heart burn and opens for food to go through to your stomach. But my muscle was staying shut and barely any food got through, the rest came back up.
After a lot of research, we figured out that the doctors in Kansas City Children’s Mercy Hospital were better at stuff like this. So we went to Kansas City and met with the doctors. They said, “You have Achalasia. We need to get you a Heller-Myotomy.” They explained what it was and said it was where they went in and destroyed the muscle completely, so food could get to my stomach.
So now that we decided on Kansas City for sure, I had a procedure where the shoved a tube up your nose. When it happened they gave me two numbing medicines and said, “Tell me which one hurts more.” That made me feel safe! Sure! The procedure was to see what was going on down in my esophagus. So they put a tiny camera on the end of the plastic tube, shoved it up my nose and after a long time finally took it out.
They put me in a hospital gown and I was starving because I hadn’t eaten for 3 weeks. I was living off of Dr. Pepper and milkshakes. As I walked to the surgery room I saw other kids having surgery. I saw groups of doctors circled around them. I lay down and then they put a mask on me and I closed my eyes. Next I found myself in the room I was going to be staying in. I woke up with IV’s in my arms and my mom and dad were there. Once I got up to go to the bathroom and I felt like I weight two million pounds.

Now I’m doing just fine. I had probably lost 20-30 pounds during this time. But now I haven’t puked except when I had the flu. Sometimes I have chest spasms when my scar in my chest acts up. I never want it to come back, but I do miss getting to drink as much Dr. Pepper as I want.