@Eli - It’s good to hear from you as I’ve been concerned since you sounded so sick last time you posted. We have members who’ve mentioned having problems with thick saliva & others who’ve had hypersalivation (i.e. produced too much saliva). It sounds like you have a mixture of the two. You can find posts about both of those problems by clicking on the magnifying glass image in the upper right of this page & typing in “thick saliva”, “hypersalivation”, &/or “saliva” & lists of posts that mention those things will come up for you to read. It will be helpful for you to see what other people have experienced and how they dealt with it. One post mentions gargling and rinsing with salt water helped with the thick saliva so you could try doing that several times/day.
Metaplasia in the stomach can indicate a pre-cancerous condition so it is something you should follow-up with sooner than later. To my mind, that would be more urgent than getting the pH impedance test done.
The pain in your throat could be from your styloids irritating your glossopharyngeal nerve. An irritated vagus nerve can also contribute to throat pain & stomach pain. Pain in the teeth, if the teeth are healthy, is usually caused by the trigeminal nerve being irritated which it often is w/ ES. I’m not sure why, but people who have calcified stylohyoid ligaments but normal length styloids seem to comment more often about the feeling of grinding or popping when swallowing than those who have elongated styloids with or without calcified stylohyoid ligaments.
With the huge amount of pain your styloidhyoid ligaments are potentially causing, it would benefit you to see one of the ENTs on our list, if possible, to get a solid ES diagnosis & discuss surgery to get those ligaments removed, however, it’s also very critical that you take care of the problem in your stomach, too. I do understand your hesitation to get your stomach treated when every procedure amplifies your ES pain.
It’s my opinion, that you should work on both at the same time if you can. Get an ENT appt. ASAP to figure out what to do about your ligaments, & follow-up with the gastroenterologist who wants to do further testing on your stomach. Let the gastroenterologist know that the testing he’s doing is increasing symptoms from ES, & ask if there’s anything that can be done before, during or after the procedure to help prevent irritation to the nerves in your throat & face.
I hope others will join this conversation & express their opinions.