Helicobacter Forums

I’m so glad to have found a source of info like this, and if anyone here can help, I’d be extremely grateful. Please feel free to skip to TL;DR.

I’m a male, 30 years of age. WAS extremely fit and an active competitive athlete.

Basics timeline -

8 months ago: Get a flu that hit me really hard, recover, but my throat remains chronically sore and phlegmy.

6 weeks ago: throat still bad, begin to get acid reflux symptoms that get progressively worse over 2 weeks.

1 month ago: see my GP about reflux and sore throat. He sends me to get a range of different tests, blood/breath/etc, test positive for HB. He perscribes the standard triple treatment for 7 days.

3 weeks ago: finish treatment, guts feels awful, no noticeable improvement in gastro discomfort, and throat is worse than ever.

2 weeks ago: can’t sleep at night, whenever I lay down my throat lights up and I go into coughing fits, I assume due to stomach acid irritating things

1 week ago: have a coughing fit so intense I throw up. Girlfriend says if I don’t go back to the doctor, she’ll kill me.

4 days ago: see doctor again he says my throat “looks red”, I thought he may tell me to do a follow up breath test, but instead puts me on a waiting list for a gastro endoscopy, and in the mean time has me taking two of the acid reflux pills a day.

So...

TL;DR

Sore throat for 8 months, reflux symptoms emerge a month a go , test positive for HB, undergo 7 day treatment, experience maybe mild improvements in gastro discomfort (placebo?) and no noticeable improvement in throat soreness. Am now waiting for a gastro endoscopy. Have not been told to get follow up testing, have not been given any post treatment guidance.

Should I seek a more specialised doctor for this issue? Or am I just panicky because I’ve never really had any health issues before? I want to make sure I’m doing everything right, as the last half year has been awful and I want it to end.

you need to find out if you still have H. pylori.

you can ask your doctor if you can switch your PPI to H2 blocker (eg. ranitidine).

you can continue ranitidine until the day before breath test to confirm the eradication of H. pylori.

ranitidine will also be advantages when it comes to endoscopy.

PPI is a long lasting drug and will give false negative to breath/stool test. PPI can also give false negative test during endoscopy.

I think it's important to know if you still have H. pylori. otherwise, you are just wasting time waiting for a recovery that will never happen.

Thank you so much for your quick reply.

I will follow through with what you e said. I think the doctor I saw for this isn’t the right person for this situation.

I’m based in Perth Western Australia - which upon further reading on this site seems like it should be beneficial. Can you recommend a GP in the Perth area who is more knowledgeable regarding HP treatment that I can use going forward?

I’m the mean time, I’ll take your advice, changing my daily meds and arranging for a retesting. How long after the last of my current meds do I need to wait before being retested?

Once again, thank you so much for your help. It would be unbelievably frustrating to go in for an endoscopy just to find out the initial treatment didn’t work.

Due to government funding shortage, we currently do not accept any more patients and the team is going to be dismissed soon. very sad to close down a public service that the government cannot see benefit.

unfortunately we are not recommending anyone in the forum.

here is a guideline how to get the retesting done.

https://www.helico.com/PYtest_guide_2013.pdf

Hi Helico_expert,

Helico_expert wrote: Wed Aug 22, 2018 8:52 am Due to government funding shortage, we currently do not accept any more patients and the team is going to be dismissed soon. very sad to close down a public service that the government cannot see benefit.

Does that mean, that this forum will be also closed?

I think the website will keep going. just that we wont have a laboratory to keep the research up.