struggling with gerd & ppi

Digestive health
1

hey all, I'm a 23 year old female that started having awful nausea, stomach upset and difficulty swallowing about four or five months ago. ten years ago, i had really bad acid reflux as a kid and had to have an esophageal dilation (with a balloon) and was put on Zantac for a stomach ulcer. the symptoms eventually stopped as the stomach ulcer healed and, with it, i stopped zantac. back in February when my symptoms started resurfacing (e.g., a few months after i was hired at a coffee shop, and was getting free espresso drinks every day), and they were BAD. constant nausea, regardless of what i ate, having to spit out bites of food bc my throat refused to swallow, heat in the back of my throat every morning and night. y'all i was like "am i pregnant????" (i was not. lol.) i figured all the coffee had aggravated my stomach and maybe i had another ulcer. started taking nexium which seemed hit or miss in terms of effectiveness. cut my diet to no processed foods, acidic foods, coffee, etc with no consistent results. took a mail-in food sensitivity test to find out i was "highly intolerant to cheddar cheese" (which i find hard to believe as homemade plain cheese quesadillas had become my best friend in helping to settle my raging stomach 80% of the time). finally got in to see a gastro doctor after all the covid regulations began to be lifted. he put me on panteprazole until an esophageal dilation was done (with a bougie, instead of a balloon) abt four weeks ago. they said they saw no ulcer and just a mild ring of tissue buildup from acid reflux. doc put me on a regimen of panteprazole in the morning, pepcid at night. well now my symptoms are worse. i had even more difficulty swallowing afterwards. i expected there to be a recovery period but not a whole month. called my doctor two weeks ago, he finally got back to me a week later and after i explained how i was feeling, he decided to up the panteprazole to twice a day and cut the pepcid entirely. top that off with a two-month follow up. (two months seems crazy to me but ok.) honestly i feel like I'm on a steady decline at this point. i feel worse taking the panteprazole twice a day, and the side effects of random diarrhea and consistent headaches is making me feel crazy. and then I'm still up at night with nausea, difficulty swallowing, shallow breathing, etc. some notes: my breathing trouble is made worse by laying down. my symptoms, in general, are worse in the morning and the night. sometimes i try to start swallowing and i can feel my body stop the mechanism halfway through. results in "choking" on spit or food. the burping is INSANE. like we are talking some crazy loud, crazy long, 8/10 olympic level burps. I'm barely 5' and 130 pounds- they don't even look like they could come from a lil thing like me. although i will feel nauseated, i have never thrown up. this is the weirdest one to me. most symptoms I've read about gerd talk about vomiting but since all of my issues have started at the beginning of the year, I've not actually vomited once. i will feel like it, begin to shake (as my body has always done when I've gotten sick), and then... nothing. maybe a dry heave but nothing ever actually comes up. then I'm just left feeling nauseated for HOURS. I'm so sorry for this absolute novel of a post but if any of y'all have any info on whatever this is, please help me. I'm so depressed bc of this and i feel like I'm never going to get any answers and i feel like my doc is not listening to me. :( if you have any advice at all i would be glad to hear it. thank you.