Nice to see you back. Do I have a story for you.
Monday night Spouse cooks me steak. What a lady. So after a preprandial croissant I sit down for the cow course. A coupla bites in - I get an esophageal spasm. This happens with me and meat sometimes. No big, right? Wait a minute. If necessary puke up the big gulp of Diet Soda. Use a big gulp of warm water to flush my esophagus (downward!) and I'm back in the black.
Nice theory.
I locked up but good. I drank the warm water - and went into this sort of physical panic. Like I'm choking. The water WON'T go down, and it fkn HURTS. It wants to come back the way it came RIGHT NOW, but I've just emptied my lungs. It was some fun trying to get the water out without simply transferring it to my trachea. Needing to breathe but knowing it's Not such a good idea right now - well it is panicky. Undivided attention sorta stuff.
An hour later - I'm still locked up tighter than Al Capone's safe. I've done the Warm Water Maneuver six times, and each time I've had to "give it back". Only the esophageal contents are coming up, right?
When I try to hold a sip of water, it sits there for about ten minutes before it comes on up. Zero drainage into the stomach.
Great. I can't eat or drink. I haven't taken my evening meds.
At 8:30 I "give up" and Spouse takes me to our Urgent Care. The doc there says she can't do a thing for me and wants to send me to the emergency room. By now it's almost ten. Hang it; we're putting the Helenator to bed. If I totally empty my 'soph I'm in reasonable comfort. And by morning it might resolve.
Slept poorly; wicked heartburn. (Duh.) Got up feeling ok and tentatively drank a few sips of water. Uh-oh. Ouch. Puke. Panic attack - fight or flight tunnelvision. Clear breech (muzzle?) and leave message with doctor. It's 8:17 am. (...) It's 12 noon and doc has not called back. Spouse tries to use our insurance to find a gastroenterologist with an open slot. No soap. We call the doc back and cancel our inquiry, then head off to the ... emergency room. "Can't swallow" is the complaint.
I was there seven hours. An earnest young doctor fluoroscoped me doing a barium swallow. I held it in for ten minutes for him, and he confirmed my self-diagnosos. Zero leakage. He opined that perhaps I had a 'soph polyp that was acting like a little ball valve. I was not convinced it was a bit of steak 'cuz 1) I chew and 2) I did manage to puike some croissant Monday night. "Positive back pressure". So I go for an endoscopy. (Interlude: The only thing worse than drinking the barium is bringing it back up in small portions across 30 minutes. Eewwgghh.) The endo doc was a gruff sort. "State the nature of the medical emergency." He peremptorily said that it was food. (Made me feel this small. Like it was My Fault. I liked the polyp theory because it would be an easy fix, and it wasn't negligence or something.) He drugged me up (not enough I might add) and put this big black thing in my mouth and told me to swallow. (I take this moment to emphatically reconfirm my heterosexuality.) Basically he roto-rootered me with the endoscope. I lay there for another thirty minutes to let the fentanyl&Versed wear off. Then the nurse gave me a shot glass of water and had me assess. I chugged it down (her eyes went wide) (gotta perform a positive function test, right?) and was rewarded by the cool wonderful feeling of water running down the pipe into the stomach.
I now get to swallow my snot and have the luxury of forgetting about it.
So now I have to make a follow-up appointment with my doc and find a strategy to Manage This if it happens again.
Folks, next time you swallow something, take a moment to feel it slide into the stomach. It is a state of grace. |
