In 1999, I was diagnosed with a rare disorder of the esophagus called achalasia. For you non-medical folks (like me), this is a disorder where the muscle in my esophagus responsible for opening and closing when I eat (it’s called a sphincter muscle…teehee…) stopped working. Completely. As in, everything I ate came back up…  Yuck. Laparoscopic surgery in the summer of 1999 corrected the problem, but the “cure” was really just an incision across the non-functioning muscle to allow food to pass by.  Since I was so young, 22 at the time, doctors said the chances of the surgery permanently correcting the problem were small.  Their warning turned out…