Bridget Oyen is a food enthusiast who has dreamed of going to culinary school since she was a teenager.
But after more than a decade of suffering from a rare disease, she was forced to make the life-changing decision to have her esophagus removed.
Eating had become a traumatic event for her since she was a child. The California native had developed excruciating pain when swallowing and was vomiting several times a day.
Ms Oyen, 31, said: “I felt like I was swallowing glass. I love food. I’ve been cooking and baking since I was little. But food doesn’t love me.”
For years doctors failed to diagnose her problem: “They told me, ‘Just lose a little weight and you’ll be better.'” (The doctors) were never interested in investigating anything further.
But after nearly 10 years of searching, Ms Oyen was finally diagnosed with achalasia, a rare condition that prevents the esophagus from evacuating food properly.
Bridget Oyen had her esophagus removed during a nine-hour surgery after being diagnosed with the rare disease achalasia.
During his nine-hour surgery, doctors cut his esophagus and reconstructed it using part of his stomach.
However, due to delays in treatment, her organ had already deteriorated beyond repair and at age 30, Ms. Oyen decided to have her esophagus removed.
Ms Oyen was 15 when she began experiencing symptoms including extreme thirst, chest pain and excessive belching. These later progressed to vomiting several times a day and severe pain when eating.
She began experiencing anxiety and her fear of eating became so intense that she developed avoidant eating disorder, which causes a person to severely limit their food intake and found it difficult to maintain her weight.
Ms Oyen, who now works as a banker, told Dailymail.com: “I called my mother in the middle of the night, crying. I was saying, ‘What am I supposed to do? I can’t live like this. How am I supposed to eat?'”
Achalasia is a rare condition that affects only one in 100,000 people. It causes the muscles in the esophagus (the tube that connects the mouth to the stomach) to not contract properly, preventing food from reaching the stomach.
The cause is unknown, but it may be due to a loss of nerve cells in the esophagus due to a viral infection or an autoimmune response.
Symptoms include difficulty swallowing, feeling something in the throat, heartburn, belching, weight loss, and chest pain.
Some may confuse achalasia with reflux disease, but in patients with achalasia, food is regurgitated from the esophagus, while reflux comes from the stomach.
There is no cure for the disease and once the esophageal muscles are damaged, they cannot function properly again.
Symptoms can usually be controlled with minor surgeries that cut or widen the esophagus to allow food to pass more easily into the stomach.
Multiple surgeries left several scars on her abdomen.
From Mrs. Oyen Initial symptoms were mild and she experienced extreme thirst, chest pain and excessive belching, and was dismissed or misdiagnosed several times and her long road to getting an answer was frustrating.
She told DailyMail.com: “Unfortunately, that’s very common with rare diseases, and it just takes a doctor who continues their research and makes sure they’re up to date on all the diseases in their field, and not just the common diseases.
“You know, when you hear hooves, you look for horses, not zebras, and unfortunately I had one.”
At the age of 25, she was referred to a neurogastroenterologist, a specialist in nervous diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. It was this doctor who finally diagnosed her with achalasia.
My Oyen said: ‘This was the first person who asked me what my pain really felt like.
Ms Oyen was left with a large scar on her abdomen from surgery to remove her oesophagus.
“I didn’t realize that when people called it heartburn it was because it felt like fire. I thought it was a cute nickname because mine didn’t feel like fire. I felt like I was being stabbed and it’s because I’ve never had heartburn.”
In 2018, Ms. Oyen went to a surgeon in San Francisco, where she underwent a Heller myotomy, a minimally invasive procedure in which doctors open the valve where the stomach and esophagus meet.
The surgery helped her continue eating for almost a year, but her symptoms returned and she was referred to a new team of doctors.
But pandemic lockdowns led to cancelled appointments and delays in care. For months, she was unable to undergo the surgery that would allow her to eat and live pain-free.
My Oyen told DailyMail.com: “I forgot how to handle so much pain. I was in mild pain for almost a year, and the pain came back really bad. I suffered from insomnia for most of that time.”
Due to the long-term damage to her esophagus, she was no longer a candidate for minimally invasive procedures and decided to remove his esophagus through a surgery called esophagectomy.
During the nine-hour surgery, doctors remove the esophagus and reconstruct it using part of another organ, usually the stomach. The top of the stomach is then pulled up and attached to the rest of the esophagus at the base of the person’s throat.
Ms. Oyen began experiencing symptoms at age 15 and had chest and throat pain when eating.
The 31-year-old said she found comfort in her dog, Canada, during her ordeal.
“Basically, my stomach now acted like a big slide,” My Oyen explained.
But the procedure left him with more complications and he developed inappropriate sinus tachycardia, which caused him to have a constant elevated heart rate and His lungs filled with fluid, causing permanent damage.
Ms. Oyen’s recovery period was incredibly painful because her surgeons had to cut a lot of muscles.
She told this website: “The pain was the worst I’ve ever felt. Everywhere. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck… I felt battered and bruised. Even sitting up felt like I was using all my strength, especially at first.”
He has been in physical therapy to regain his stamina and while he is eating better, he sometimes struggles, but he accepts that his life will always be like this.
Ms Oyen said: “I know that when I eat, it will be uncomfortable. It may be painful and it will cause a domino effect of symptoms throughout my body. But I can’t stop eating.”
Because of the new dual function of your stomach, you have to control your food intake and He can only consume a quarter cup of food every 20 to 30 minutes, and often finds that a meal can take up to two hours to fully eat.
Ms Oyen added: “It’s hard to take in as many calories as my body needs when I eat such small amounts. But I’m not losing weight as fast as I was for a while, and that’s scary.”
Following her ordeal, Ms Oyen developed post-traumatic stress disorder and said: Her psychiatrist and therapist are one of the main reasons she was able to get through last year.
She has also found support among her friends and family and in online communities.
Ms Oyen added: “I’m lucky to have a great group of friends. My group of friends has grown from a couple of close people to a small community of people with chronic illnesses.
“We may not all have the same diagnosis, but we all understand it. The community of people with chronic illnesses and disabilities is thriving on TikTok. It’s beautiful.”
