The Scarecrow wanted a brain. The Tin Man wanted a heart. And Kaliesha Harris? She only wants to burp.
Harris simply can’t let out a belch — even when her stomach is bubbling and she’d really like some relief, which means something as simple as sipping a soda can be super uncomfortable.
She thought she was alone in her suffering until she discovered on social media that there’s an actual name for her condition — and a surgery to correct it.
“I’ve always thought I was just different and so rare, but I learned on TikTok from another girl’s post that there are a lot of others who can’t burp either,” Harris told The Post.
She suffers from “no burp syndrome,” or retrograde cricopharyngeus dysfunction, a rare medical condition that prevents people from being able to burp or belch.
R-CPD occurs when the cricopharyngeus sphincter muscle at the top of the esophagus cannot relax enough to allow air to exit.
Being unable to belch or burp causes excess air to accumulate in the stomach and esophagus leading to side effects like bloating, excess farting and gargling noises that emanate from the neck and chest that make life painful or just plain embarrassing for sufferers.
Harris said her inability to burp has often left her with debilitating gas pains.
“When I eat certain foods, or especially drink carbonated drinks, I’m not able to let out any of that air, so it does have to work its way down and causes such bad gas pain that’s had me in tears on the floor many times!” she said.
Harris learned that there is a procedure that can treat R-CPD from social media and posted about her plans.
“I’m not just weird, there’s something I could do about it!” she said in a TikTok video.
Harris booked an appointment with a throat doctor four hours away because “there aren’t many people who do this procedure.”
Typically, RCPD patients are put under general anesthesia for the outpatient procedure in which Botox is injected into the cricopharyngeal sphincter to relax the muscle and allow gas to escape from the esophagus through the mouth.
Whether it’s injected into the face for a cosmetic procedure or elsewhere in the body for a functional reason, Botox works by preventing a motor nerve from releasing the chemical transmitter that signals a muscle to contract
“From my consultation and research, the Botox is temporary, but about 80% of people have permanent results from their body learning how to keep that muscle relaxed,” Harris said.
Harris explained that the other 20% of patients may have to return for a second injection, but following that, they too will see permanent improvement.
“My procedure is scheduled for September, so I’m so excited to be able to burp!”
R-CPD was only given an official name in 2019 when the first scientific paper on the condition was published.
Yakubu Karagama, an ear, nose and throat consultant at London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, told the BBC that despite R-CPD only recently being given a medical name, the condition had been tormenting people for a long time.
“When you eat something or drink, you have this pain. Some patients have to lie down so that the gas will come up, and some people have to stick their finger in their mouth to force themselves to be sick, so that the gas will come out with it,” Karagama said.
The belch remedy was discovered by Robert Bastian, MD, an ear, nose and throat doctor and director of Bastian Voice Institute in Downers Grove, Ill.
“It has been a great privilege to be the one to ‘discover’ and codify the diagnosis and help spread the information to other doctors … and above all, it has been an honor to work with lovely patients who have suffered so much and for so long with this terrible disorder,” he told Fox News Digital.
One of Bastian’s patients spoke about the effectiveness of the procedure, saying it has allowed them to burp, that “any gurgling is gone,” and that “bloating has diminished almost entirely,” the doctor shared.
The patient also noted that getting the procedure has “drastically” improved their day-to-day life.
