Good morning all and a rather gray morning it is too.

I'm headed down to the VA once again for my yearly Roto-Rooter-ing. Sounds pretty bad I suppose but with the stuff they pump into me before the rootering begins all I mainly suffer is a sore throat for about a week afterward along with being out of it for 24 hrs after they hit me with the stuff which means of course that I have to have a driver to bring me back.

Hi Honey!

My wonderful wife has offered to take me down and bring me back and on top of that her daughter Jennifer has offered to play shopkeeper for the day so Long Meadow Farms quilt shop can remain open. Since it is only 14 days before Christmas this is a good thing.

Now…about this process I'm undergoing. What's that? Maybe you don't need to know? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway so there

I received a very unwanted medical discharge from the Navy in 1988 and as a result, my beloved career in the Submarine force  came to a screeching halt…my plans scuttled and sunk to the bottom. I had three service related disabilities, two of which the Submarine force could live with but the third was not acceptable and a good sub sailor was forced to hit the streets.

I had developed acid reflux disease and the subsequent ulcers that tend to go with it. Being on a sub is a rather stressful job; living, working and breathing in a extremely unique environment and although small ulcers were not uncommon at all it's the big ones that got noticed and that was an absolute no-no as far as going to sea in a submarine was concerned. My "big one" was in my esophagus just above my stomach valve…oh just lovely!

Fast forward to today and I still have the problem although the ulcer is mostly scar tissue now. Strong medication takes care of most of all that extra acid my traitorous body produces but I also live with an esophagus that is all scarred up and burned from years of acid running up to my ears during the time when I wasn't receiving any treatment for the problem (I didn't wise up and enroll in the Veteran's Administration until 2001 being the stubborn bonehead that I am). Now, over a period of about a year the thing starts to constrict in two different places where the scar tissue is the heaviest and eventually ends up constricting to the point where the passage has shrunk to a size about the diameter of a pencil or less. The fun really starts when my esophagus, tired of the whole thing, begins to rebel by spasming out, causing the exact sensations of a heart attack. The reason for this wonderful experience is that it shares the same nerve bundle as the heart itself.

So much fun.

All the above makes everyday things like swallowing and belching (of all things) a much more interesting process than it usually is as you might imagine. Like where I occasionally discover that most of my dinner never arrived at the stomach and is waiting at one of the constrictions much like a line of cars waiting at a toll booth for the moron at the head of line to find exact change or something. So now it's off to White River Junction and same day surgery where they will uncoil the endoscope from hell (looks like a three headed octopus), pump me full of la-la juice and head on down to expand a few things here and there and do a full inspection to see if all my guts are still present and accounted for.

This isn't the first time I've had this done and it won't be the last. It's just one of the things that I have to put up with on a regular basis that comes from my time in the service. No regrets at all and no complaints here. Just a need to post about my experiences with the medical end of things. Makes life a bit easier to deal with if you can understand that.

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