Hi. I’m feeling a bit guilty cos I haven’t logged in for ages. But then I saw the new forum emails, so here I am.
I thought I’d ask if anyone else has experience with swallowing problems and if so how did you deal with it?
I got ill with a virus last year. I think it was covid, but before there were tests available. It was scary and I still don’t feel 100% back to where I was before it.
I had a cough that started out dry, became productive and then became dry again and went on for about 16 weeks. I’ve never had a cough last that long before, not even when I had pneumonia once when I was younger. The cough eventually went away but I had problems with my throat ever since, which became a long-lasting problem with swallowing.
It was a real muddle because I thought it was to do with the cough, my GP thought it was acid reflux, and when I went to see ENT , it was obvious that they were in emergency mode because of the pandemic. I can understand that, but it meant if you didn’t have something extremely serious there wasn’t much help. I got prescribed proton pump inhibitors on the off-chance it was acid reflux.
I didn’t want to take them, because they actually have a load of side-effects. Anyway it later turned out that the swallowing problem is actually more likely due to MS as my oesophageal contractions are uncoordinated.
It’s a difficult symptom to manage, and at the worst point I became very scared, because even swallowing water was sometimes a problem. I was pretty close to despair. It’s a lot better now than at that worst point, but I’m scared of ever going back to that.
It’s also still quite tricky to manage day-to-day. There are foods I just can’t eat (dry crumbly, flaky, or bitty food is the worst). If I eat the wrong thing it feels like I’m choking and it can set off a prolonged coughing fit. This irritates my throat and it becomes very sore and raw, and starts to over-produce mucus and it goes into a spiral where I’m clearing my throat constantly and that just keeps the irritation going.
Has anyone experienced similar and do you have any tips on how to manage it better?