Laparoscopic Nissen
Fundoplication
Heart burn operation
My Operation
April 2004
My Gerd Problem
Bloating
Air Swallowing
Post-op
log
Can't Burp
Thing
One Year Later
This is my experience, as I experienced it. I have no experience with others on this. I feel I had a rather hard time of it. I've read that others don't have this hard of a time.
Let's start right out with the two most important things one needs to know to survive this operation. One and the most important, if for any reason you need to burp badly and can't, use your two fingers, the index and the fore finger to press down on the top of your tongue. This will cause you to burp or regurgitate, and will relieve your can't burp problem.
The second thing you should know, if you are having trouble eating or drinking, drinking hot water will go down, when nothing else will. I'm talking hot here. Not so hot that it will burn your mouth, but almost. It doesn't work, just warm. If it's too hot to keep in your mouth, it's too hot and spit it out. But it needs to be almost that hot. I could drink hot water way before I could drink room temp or cold water.
Once you can drink the hot
water, you can likely eat chicken noodle soup. It's hot like the hot water.
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It's been almost nine months now since I had
this operation. Although recovery was a bitch, this operation did cure my
heartburn. It's almost zero. The little I have is not very severe at all. And I
eat a lot more things that I avoided before. The main side effect is what I
think they call, can't burp. I can and do burp. But accassionally, when I'm
eating or drinking, my esphogus gets caught in the middle of a can't burp, or
can't belch. I can't eat when this happens, until I press down on my tongue with
my fingers and I burp. I can usually swallow water slowly until this thing
clears also. Chewing my food well also helps to minimize this situation. It
seems to be slowly getting better, or I'm just learning to live with it.