70 yo WF with solid food dysphagia, has to mince her meat, losing some weight. This is new. Also pretty new- multiple sinus allergies, milk intolerance, allergies to fish and cephalosporins.
Most recently, asthma- her whole life on a farm, suddenly she can’t catch her breath.
What she does NOT have is a long h/o GERD symptoms or obesity, the usual congeners of reflux induced strictures.
Three kids altogether, but that was long ago, she’s a great grandmother now, the waters calmer as the wind drops- it’s near sunset.
But there was an allotment of chaos. In the fall of 1960, she slipped away with the 18 year old boy she’d fallen for, herself just 15. Snuck out at dusk and met him in the corn patch. Drove to Mississippi, where Alabama’s high standards regarding birth certificates held no sway. Hers was torn at the edge, so 1945 read 19…“It don’t matter, anyway,” the judge said, and married them. All this bustle wasn’t really her style. It arose after her Dad discouraged her beau with buckshot, or threatened to, at least, believe he aimed high. So they took day labor in Georgia, didn’t return until the first boy turned one, fat legs firming with his ascent from the horizontal. All babies everywhere grease these skids, little man did his bit. Her Dad couldn’t stop crying over the return of her, and of his, she said. Young Daddy entered the fold en passant, still wary for a while.
She’s still with that Daddy 55 years later, him thickened, her filed down to sinew. She wears her wedding ring on her thumb so it won’t catch on things around the farm, cows, cotton, okra.
Three kids, as above, three grandkids, and two greats. A thin line, I thought, but maybe not- I tend toward excess.
Her 4 year old great grandson is a real ally, loves digging in the garden with her, baking on the “arn skillet” her granny taught her how to fry peach pies on, clean with a salted cloth dipped in a bit of grease, never water, no soap. He’ll sew with her, see to the chickens- anything, just the one on one of it, rare for both of them.
He cries if she isn’t there when he shows up.
“Nobody else does that,” says she, you can see the 15 year old girl wishing they still would.
Exam is pretty normal.
Eosinophilic esophagitis, I think- it runs with allergies:
Makes for strictures, too- they line up in rings. She has rings to spare:
Better be careful with the balloon dilation, they tend to tear.