Blocked

I had a swallowing problem I talked about a few times here in the past six months.   I noticed over the past year that things were getting stuck when I swallowed.   I had some imaging and a swallow test done and the resulting diagnosis was, “the hardware from your spinal fusions has caused your esophagus to move forward, try not to get things stuck.”  

That was pretty much it.   Apparently, esophagus’s don’t have to be straight.   It’s okay that there is extra tissue in this pill-catching spot in the middle of my neck.   Have you thought about calling it a “feature?”   That’s what they do in the world of software when something is broken but they don’t want to fix it.  

After all of this evaluation work—which was useful in that I found out it wasn’t tumorous or cancerous and there wasn’t a constriction—I discovered my father-in-law had had a similar thing going for years.    Apparently I’m in good company when it comes to throats and swallowing.

Today was the first time I’ve ever had a real issue with it.   I was at our state museum of art.   I was eating in the posh little cafe near the gift shop.   I had a white cloth napkin in my lap and I was eating a very meaty pot pie.    I swallowed a piece of beef and it got stuck.

It didn’t get stuck mildly, it got stuck badly.     This spot where things get stuck is lower than you can make the retching noise and kick it up from the back of your throat.    I swallowed and the food just bounced in my throat.  I hard swallowed (I just made that phrase up) and the food bounced again.    I tried multiple times but the food was just not going to go down.   Bt them my eyes were watering and I was starting to gag.  I began to cough (which only made it worse since my trachea was the unobstructed channel) I grabbed the white napkin and held it to my mouth.   Food came up.   Food came out.

It was all contained within the napkin and thankfully, I didn’t vomit, but it wasn’t pretty I’m sure (I didn’t check.)   Food had gone up into my sinuses, which was fun for about another half-hour.    Other than that, it was a great lunch.

The Big Boy Update:  Peanut oil!   My son is allergic to peanuts.   My husband had heard that he would likely be fine with peanut oil, so he fried some french fries in partial peanut oil tonight.   My son ate every one on his plate and had no idea he was eating had anything related to peanuts on it.    That’s great news because it’s one less thing to worry about from an allergy standpoint.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   I played a game called Zingo with my daughter tonight.   It’s bingo with pictures.   She was having a bad vision day.   I took some videos of her picking up the chip and then putting her eye one inch from the card and scanning the sixteen pictures on it to see if she had the shoe or the book or the sun.   She never complained about not being able to see.  

Fitness Update:  I went to the fitness room with my friend this morning.   She had a deposition to go to and we spent time lifting free weights and talking about questions she might be asked at the deposition.   She was there a long time today, I’m sure it was more exhausting than the workout we did this morning.