Tossed by My Cookies

Most Sunday nights, my wife makes a batch of delicious chocolate- chip cookies. I used to be able to eat these with abandon, but the older I get, the more these lard-saturated things catch up with me.

The other night after scarfing down the equivalent of about 10-11 cookies—if you count raw dough, which I love fresh practically as much as I love the baked cookies—I woke up several times with acid in my throat, even though I took a preemptive Pepcid before I went to bed. At one point I aspirated some acid and spent the rest of the morning coughing up acid-tinged phlegm that burned my throat. Quite uncomfortable!

My goal is to eat no more than three cookies on these occasions in the future, especially when it's later in the evening. Man, I'm only 41 but seeing signs all the time of my gradually aging body. I think the treatments back in 1994 for my Hodgkin's disease did a real number on my digestive tract, starting with the esophagus.

If I don't take a prescription called Protonix at least every other day, I have difficulty swallowing food. I don't know why, for sure—I think it's something to do with scar tissue from the radiation treatment. I suppose eventually I'll need to have a scope sent down to find out...

Honey, don't let me overdo next time.