I wonder if any of you have any experience with treating a hiatal hernia.
Since October I've been experiencing chronic indigestion and upper abdominal
pain.  I finally went to a Gastroenterologist in November and he diagnosed it
as Esophogeal Reflux Disease.  He prescribed medicatin (Pepcid 40 mg. daily)
and told me to stay away from {*filter*}, coffee, tea, chocolate, and fryed foods.
After being on the medication and being very careful with my diet for two weeks
I called the Doctor to let him know that my symptoms had not improved.  He
then decided to schedule me to have a gastro endoscopy.  I decided I didn't
want to have that done and asked if an upper GI would be appropriate.  He
reluctantly agreed to prescribe an upper GI and an abdominal ultra sound.
The results were a hiatal hernia.  All else looked OK except that after not
having eaten for 14 hours before the test, the upper GI showed that there was
still cooking.net">food in my stomach.  The Doctor now seems very concerned about the fact
that my stomach is very slow to empty.  He now wants to do a gastic emptying
scan where you eat chicken livers treated with radio isotopes and then have
pictures taken every 15 minutes for 3 hours while you digest it.  I asked if
the medication could have slowed my digestive processes, or possibly stress
since I was very nervous when I had the upper GI, or possibly the fact that I
went to bed less than two hours after eating dinner the night before the upper
GI.  The Doctor says none of these factors have any influence on digestion.
I hate to go through any more tests unless it is absolutely necessary, and I
get the feeling that this doctor is test crazy (He did a {*filter*} workup on me
the first time I went to see him despite the fact that I had a complete {*filter*}
workup done less than two months before and I gave him the results of those
tests.)  The medication that he has precribed (Pepcid) does not seem to be
alleviating any of the indigestion or upper abdominal pain.  The Doctor also
now tells me that there must be some other problem since hiatal hernias do not
cause stomach pain.  Do any of you have any experience with hiatal hernias?
Any advice would be appreciated.  Thanks.  Marlene

The problem with hiatal hernias is that they are very common and
most of them are asymptomatic.  Therefore, even if you do have one,
it is not certain that it is the source of the problem.  Endoscopy
probably would reveal the extent of any esophagitis, if any.
Fixing hiatal hernias is not a trivial procedure.