Before You Fill Yet Another Prescription, Flip The Script

In 2006, I was inspired to write, Automotive Tip-Before You Replace the Brakes, Check Your Tires.  Now, some five years later, I feel inspired once again.  This time, however, it’s not about tires.

For the past several months, I’ve battled with a nagging sore throat.  Pain, pain, pain.  Day-after-day, I felt some degree of discomfort.  To function, I took pain relievers; but I’m not the kind of person who likes to take meds for long periods of time.  After all, most medications, or shall I say pharmaceuticals, treat symptoms not problems.  Don’t get me wrong.  I couldn’t have made it this long without relief.  But I have a point to make here.

It started as hoarseness.  I was asked to sing at a friend’s ordination service.  He was being ordained as Bishop in his church body and I was asked to participate.  I remember being slightly hoarse but didn’t pay it any attention.  I felt it would pass with rest.  Well, that small bit of hoarseness turned into full blown laryngitis.  Still, I wasn’t worried.  I had sung hard before and reasoned that all I needed to do was rest my voice and all would be well.  This was back in May.

Fast-forward to now, almost four months later.  The hoarseness has morphed into a nagging sore throat.  The kind that greets you with a toothy grin in the morning, flirts with you throughout the day and gets in bed with you every night.  Ummmmm, I thought.  Wonder if it’s silent reflux?  You see, silent reflux was the diagnosis I got from an ENT doctor when I had a bout with throat pain last Fall.  He stuck a tube down my nose, wiggled it around, had me cough and told me I had silent reflux. Yikes!  He prescribed Prilosec.  “Well, I already have a prescription for Nexium,” I told him.  This I had from my GI doctor. 

This journey has taken me from doctor to doctor.  From prescription to prescription.  From hope to disappointment.  All the while, my hoarseness and throat pain have flip-flopped in intensity. 

I believe that Life speaks to us.  True, it is frustrating as heck to deal with one dead-end after another.  And your internal dialogue can catastrophize every symptom.  Mine kept threatening cancer.  Someway, somehow you have to silence those thoughts of dread so you can be open to answers.  In fact, I was so stuck on thinking my symptoms were acid reflux that I minimized what the Universe kept interjecting– allergies. 

I made an appointment to see my GI doctor.  He didn’t want to do another Upper GI Endoscopy so soon.  Rather, he recommended that I see an ENT doctor.  “It’s a throat issue,” he said.  “Yeah, but the last time I went, he said it was silent reflux,” I argued. Arggghhh.  I felt like a ping pong ball.  Not ready to get another endoscope put down my nose, I decided to try something else.  I read about some natural remedies:  Licorice Extract, Slippery Elm, Raw Apple Cider Vinegar and went to The Vitamin Shoppe to pick them up.  While there, the salesperson told me that my problems could be allergy related.  That struck a chord.  I even took a Zyrtec tablet, but when it didn’t work, I felt that was proof in favor of reflux.  The herbal remedies helped for a day but the problem persisted. 

I broke down and made an appointment with the ENT doctor. I promised myself that I wouldn’t have that endoscope put down my nose unless it was absolutely necessary.  Yep, I had a tude (attitude). With a tongue depresser and some weird head gear, the doctor looked at my throat.  He felt my neck.  No swollen lymph nodes.  I sighed with relief.  He suggested that we rule out thyroid issues.  Thyroid?  What?  To my surprise, he told me that thyroid issues could yield the same symptoms.  In the meantime, he gave me a prescription for Aciphex. “If it doesn’t work and your thyroid test is negative, you’ll need to come back and do the scope.” 

Not wanting to fill the prescription, I decided to seek a homeopathic doctor.  “This sounds like an allergy, not like the kind that causes anaphylaxis, but like being allergic to Tide Laundry Detergent.”  This was the response of Dr. Delaney, a Naturopathic Doctor with the Wellness Alliance in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  It made sense at the time.   Her treatment regimen even brought relief within 24 hours of implementation.  After a week of significant improvement, the symptoms returned.  I panicked.  It felt like someone had thrown a bunch of marbles underneath my feet and I couldn’t get my balance. I broke down and filled the prescription for Aciphex.

Throughout all of this, I did a lot of praying.  Who wants to be a slave to a pill with side effects of headache, stomach discomfort or worse?  Who wants to take meds that take Calcium from your bones?  So I prayed.  I prayed for direction.  For illumination.  For God to leave breadcrumbs for me to follow.  Then one day it happened.  Casually flipping through the Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, I read these words: 

Another significant cause of chronic sore throat is food allergy.  Typical upper-respiratory-tract symptoms of chronic delayed food allergy include chronic sore throat, runny nose, sinusitis, tonsillitis, and laryngitis.

Eureka!  There was that whisper again – allergy.  More like a shout this time.  Chronic delayed food allergy literally leaped off the page.  I contacted my ND and we tossed around common troublesome foods.  By deductive reasoning, I figured it had to be grain related.  I recalled how I had upped my intake of grains after my yearly physical last year where my doctor told me I was pre-diabetic.  I tossed potato bread for multi-grain breads.  Carb-heavy breakfasts were replaced by oat and honey cereals, and my all-time favorite, bran muffins. 

My conclusion is this.  Doctors don’t have all the answers.  Quite the contrary.  The whole reason I have stomach problems anyway is because I was prescribed Naproxen for menstrual cramps.  It was too strong despite taking it with food and milk as prescribed.  In this day and time, it is necessary for you to turn the tables.  Do your homework.  Become more active in your health.  And require more of your doctors else you’ll get lots of medication but little quality treatment.  Heck, the ENT doctor automatically assumed silent reflux because that is what he determined a year ago.  When I pressed for more, he touted that he had treated hundreds of patients and 99% of the time it was reflux.  Before you go to a medical doctor--even a specialist--and fill yet another prescription, know that medicine is a practice.  It is.  Instead of letting them practice on you, flip the script.  Practice on them.