Mason City Mailman’s GERD & Heartburn Cured With Innovative Surgery

I’m a mailman here in town, Mason City. Try to stay as active as I can. Got kids in sports and try to help coach and do as much as I can for my family when I can have time.

Around 11, 12, 13 years old, somewhere in there, started getting heartburn probably once a week. Maybe once every other week. Slowly got worse and worse and worse as I got older. It got to the point where it was affecting my sleep. I was waking up in the middle of the night. I couldn’t drink water because water would cause more of it. I had to do something about it. It was affecting everything I was doing. I couldn’t socialize with friends. I couldn’t go do anything with my kids or my wife. Got to the point where I had to watch what I ate when we went out to eat. It didn’t matter what I would eat and I would just try to force things down and then prepare to have heartburn later. So I would always constantly have a pocket full of Tums or whatever the case was.

Finally went to my primary physician about it, and my primary physician referred me to Dr. Fabian, and he had some new procedure that sounded too good to be true. The first appointment with him, he was telling me about a band of magnets inside my body. Kind of worried me a little bit. I didn’t know what to think, and said that it would not allow any gases and stuff to come up and my heartburn should be gone. So I thought about it for a couple days and I decided to go ahead with the surgery. And the moment I walked out of the hospital after the surgery, I noticed I didn’t have any heartburn. And I noticed that I didn’t get any heartburn for a couple of days, couple of weeks, and then all of a sudden, it was just gone and it was amazing.

I started eating whatever foods I wanted to eat, and right away after the surgery for about six months, it was tough to adjust to the restriction on my esophagus. I had to adjust to it and learn to start my morning with some water to get that going. Some softer foods to get that opening up a little bit. And then over time, you just kind of develop a routine that works, and I don’t even notice it anymore. I haven’t even thought about it. My quality of life has increased a ton and it’s truly amazing procedure. Changed my life.