Emotional Reflux

When my Cammie was a baby she had reflux.  I know...so what?  ALOT of babies have reflux.  ALOT of people have reflux.  Buy some drops.  Get some Prilosec.  Hell, I don't even think doctors perform tests for reflux anymore, do they?  They just give out prescriptions or recommendations and send you on your way.

But back then, reflux was a BIG DEAL.  Well, in our case, at least.  It took TWO YEARS - all kinds of tests, heart-wrenching procedures, hospitalizations, and more for the doctors to finally figure out that the root cause of her health issues (upper-respiratory infections, earaches, pneumonia, persistent vomiting and fever) was REFLUX, of all things.  I don't think I slept at all during those two years.  By the time she was finally diagnosed, she had ulcers on her esophagus and the first full year of treatment was solely dedicated to healing the damage that had already been done.  A two-year-old with ulcers in her esophagus?  *sigh*

One of the things I remember most about that time was when she was a little older and started eating "big people" foods.  She would repeatedly cry and whine and say she was hungry.  I would give her something to eat.  She would throw up.  This was a constant vicious cycle for my poor baby.  Oftentimes, she would put her little hand on her chest and say to me, "my heart hurts."  It kills me now, just typing those words.  The doctor and I finally put two and two together and realized she meant she had heartburn.  That was her way of explaining how it felt.  "My heart hurts."  Even now, some 20 years later, that brings tears to my eyes.

So, why drag up old, painful stuff like that?

Well, I was thinking about how sometimes people hurt our feelings, but we don't know how to respond or what to say.  So we swallow it.  Right?  Suck it up.  Gulp it on down, like a jagged pill.  And there it sits.  Our body responds by producing acids - like mini-pac missies, racing to gobble up the "gunk" - but then turns on itself, like an emotional auto-immune disorder, and becomes toxic to our system.  We feel it - churning in our stomachs.  We feel it - rising in the back of our throats.  Swallow it back down, and the cycle continues.  Sometimes we will even become physically ill from it.  Regurgitate it, and more often than not, it ends up splashing some poor soul in the face who had absolutely nothing to do with it in the first place.

So, I wondered...

For those of use who don't know how to tell people they've hurt our feelings...

I wondered if we might try very simply saying this...

"My heart hurts."*







*No satisfaction guarantee, but it certainly beats choking yourself to death.