Hi! Sad to hear of so many problems you have. It s also quite hard to categorize all your symptoms and laboratory findings. Pictures could be more helpful. some of my thoughts:
1) A lot of drinking in combination with low specific weight of urine, overweight despite weight watching, thyroid dysfunction: let them check your cortisol. It could be some light form of diabetes insipidus. It could even explain your blood test results.
2) Cough: the causes of cough not always originate from lungs or GERD. It can also have causes in upper airways (like dripping of your nasopharynx). A referral to ENT could be helpful.
3) Did I understand you correctly? You dont take any medication for your rheumatic arthritis because of adverse effects in your stomach? And what do you take for your pain? Since you dont have any GER anymore, maybe you could try to take the medication again. But dont forget to take the stomach protection with it (like omeprasole, pantoprasole etc.).
4) wellbutrin can cause cough and problems with sleep. Maybe your psychiatrist could try out some other medication and see if the symptoms get better?
5) since you have had nissens fundoplication, malabsorbtion could be a problem, which means you should substitute the whole B vitamin group (B12, B6, folic acid, B1), eventually proteins too. Paxiled could probably give you better suggestions about this.
6) about your blood results, really not enough info to say anything... a pic of the sheet would be helpful... please edit your name and name of the lab out.
Good luck!
Being the Community Leader of the Thyroid Disorders forum, having hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s and tons of thyroid symptoms myself, I can’t help asking what your current thyroid hormone levels are. Not TSH, but the actual thyroid hormones, Free T4 and Free T3.
Even if your levels are in the so-called “normal” ranges, that doesn’t mean they’re normal for you or that you can’t have thyroid related symptoms. Hypothyroidism is a major cause of GERD, muscle/bone aches/pain and some of your other symptoms, including weight issues, sleep apnea, etc. I have a nodule on my thyroid that tends to make me clear my throat a lot, especially after I eat. Nodules (or swollen/inflamed thyroid) can also cause constant coughing. If you’ve never had a thyroid ultrasound, I’d suggest you do so.
GERD can also cause chronic coughing (or throat clearing). I know you don’t think your cough is psychosomatic, but it’s possible that it was originally caused by the GERD and you got used to that feeling in your throat, so you’re still coughing. I’ve just started a new GERD medication that’s doing really well, but I still find myself clearing my throat once in a while. I’m trying to make a conscious effort to make sure I “need” to clear my throat before doing it, because sometimes, it actually gives me a sore throat.
All of that said, if you’ve been diagnosed with Barrett’s esophagus, you could still have the coughing. To my knowledge, once diagnosed, Barrett’s doesn’t go away (I could be wrong about that). BTW - I have a brother who had esophageal cancer, as well. He had surgery to remove his esophagus, then they pulled his stomach up to make a a new one. That was 15 (or more) years ago and he does well, but still has to take a PPI and be careful about his diet.
You've had so many tests that it's hard to suggest anything in a conventional medical way. The thirst with your other symptoms sounds like blood sugar problems,. but I'm guessing you've been tested for that over and over given how many tests you've had. Did you ever have a full-on glucose tolerance test? It takes several hours to do. The cough could be allergies, and allergies are very hard to deal with. It could also be psychosomatic. I had a throat clearing thing for a while but it went away when I learned it was really just me. Reflux if unchecked can cause problems swallowing so that can also cause a cough. But again, you've had so many tests, you're on a lot of medication all of which has some kind of side effect, you've got arthritis although for most people that doesn't cause a lot of pain, their pain is often muscular even though arthritis is present but again, you've had much more testing than most people. There are two things one can do when you've seen a lot of docs and haven't fixed your basic problem, and that's one, find better docs such as going to a place like the Mayo Clinic or other such facility or 2, give up on allopathic medicine and try fixing things through natural medicine. GERD, for example, is usually a disease of eating. Dietary changes, which can mean although you say you eat well you might actually not be eating well -- you are overweight and while that can be caused by a lot of things eating is one thing that can do it. GERD is really just a complex way of saying your stomach is producing too much acid, and then the docs prescribe you meds to decrease the acid which forces the stomach to go on and produce even more because it has to have an acidic environment whenever you eat protein or certain minerals. It's called rebound acidity and is much like rebound insomnia, caused by relying on sleeping pills to sleep. Natural medicine might assume you've got things you may not actually have but the diet recommended might work anyway by forcing you to eat a lot better. I used to manage health food stores, and the practitioners who used those stores often found things wrong that again might not have actually been wrong but the treatment was usually cutting out dairy and wheat and sugar and red meat and people often found themselves getting better slowly anyway. So it's a thought if everything else has failed you. Peace.