the_new_scum

Wednesday night I went out for a meal to celebrate Louisa getting her PhD, and disaster struck. The very first bite of my food got stuck in my throat. It's something that's happened before but it's always absolutely fine. I was surprised at how hot the food was and rather than rudely spit it out, I swallowed it quicker than I should've done. Normally this would've squeaked through my throat while my eyes water a little before relief when it passes, except this time it didn't.

Gag reflex ACTIVATE! and I (as discreetly as possible) vomit into a napkin at the table. Mortified, I quickly get up and run for the bathroom expecting a couple more shots. I think I've sorted myself out, get myself cleaned up and my throat *feels* pretty clear so I return to my table. I have a little something to drink, just to get my throat completely clear before trying to eat more food but this sets me off again. I run back to the bathroom and spend a few more minutes in there panicking and trying to sort myself out.

A frustrated Louisa pokes her head through the door, clearly upset that my buffoonery has ruined what should've been a nice evening. She quickly goes to settle the bill on a meal neither of us has managed to eat any of, apologising profusely the whole time. We saunter off back to her flat with me alternating between apologising and vomiting.

Back at the flat my throat is hurting a bit, but I'm not sure if it's just sore from all the puking or whether there's something in there. A&E quickly seems like the best (albeit annoying) option and sober but still over the drink-drive limit we get a cab over there armed with a plastic bowl to catch my shame.

Triage nurse's first suggestion is either fresh pineapple or Coke, one of which is much more readily available in a busy hospital. The idea (and previous experience backs this up, APPARENTLY) is that the Coke goes down past any small blockage and then the buildup of gas helps dislodge it. DON'T BE SILLY, NURSE! This endeavour proves to basically be me piling coke on top of a blockage that it won't go through, before hitting my gag reflex and forcing me to painfully hurl all the Coke back into the bowl.

Begrudgingly accepting that maybe I'm not there to waste everyone's time, nurse goes off to see if the ENT specialist will see me rather than making me wait in A&E with the terminally clumsy. He agrees, but I'll still have to wait a while, listening to an audio mix of Batman Begins on TV and a woman claiming that Codeine just isn't good enough and she simply MUST have morphine.

I see the doctor and have a soft tissue Xray of my throat to see if there's anything there. Dosing me up with buscopan (sp?) which is a muscle relaxer. The idea is that my throat will slacken and any blockage will just drop harmlessly into the acidic abyss of my stomach. Doctor also gives me an anti-emetic to stop me puking. We maintain that I'm not actually puking, since at this point the bowl is fillled with saliva and nothing else. We suspect that since I can't swallow saliva, it's just pooling at the back of my throat until it sets of my gag reflex and escapes into the bowl. Doctor is adamant that my stomach is foolishly thinking I'm being poisoned and that this is the way to fix it. Xray finds nothing in my throat and Dr hypothesises that the blockage has cleared from the buscopan and that it's just sore now because of the stress. He keeps to his stomach poison theory for an explanation as to why I'm still having to hurl saliva every 3 minutes. At around 3am he sends me home adamant that I'll be fine. He's on shift until 8am though, so if I have any trouble I'm to come straight back and he'll rush me through instead of me waiting at A&E again. Home to bed. I shall attempt to sleep.

I wake up properly at about 7:15 after a shocking night. The saliva hurls continue through the night, waking me up every so often so that I can clear the pool into the bowl and then go back to sleep. Meanwhile my body is telling me I need to vomit properly, something that the muscle relaxer and my non-working throat muscles won't let me do. At this point I'm started to feel especially bad. I may have even begun sobbing in front of the toilet. Back to the hospital then, albeit later than I really should've done because I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt for as long as possible during the potency of the medication. We get there to find ENT specialist has fucked off home and I have to wait in reception again.

I get seem again by a nurse who's very nice to me and understands that I've obviously had an especially shitty night. Annoyingly I'm going to have to wait for an ENT doctor to do the rounds before I'm seen, but the first thing she does is put me on a drip since I've hurled up nearly all the fluid in my body. Doctor comes around, asks some questions and makes vague allusions to surgery. Our main question is "How can this be happening if there's no blockage" Her response is "There IS a blockage" Doctor from previous night seemingly proved wrong. After swabbing some foul tasting anaesthetic into the back of my mouth she attempts to jam a fibre-optic cable into my nostril. Apparently my nostrils are "small" so this doesn't quite work. In the end she has to remove whatever protective sheath this fucking cable has to make it narrow enough to get through. My nostrils sting like fuck and I can't stop coughing at this camera tapping the back of my throat from inside my head. Doctor can't see anything, although she can see a giant amount of saliva compared to the norm. Progress!

So it looks like I'm having an operation. I'm left to sit around while they try and find me a bed. Meanwhile a nurse kindly offers and then brings me some diazepam. That's the stuff Solid Snake uses to make him awesome at sniping. I'M ALL FOR THAT! Moron nurse brings me a fucking pill, and then when I tell him I can't swallow he implores me to "Give it a try" I win in the most minor way possible 2 seconds later when the pill is hurled back into my trusty bowl. So at this point it's somewhere around 10am and they get me a bed. All the surgeons are in a meeting until the afternoon. My operation could be as early as midday or as late as 5pm. Brilliant. The next few hours are spent in my hospital bed, alternating between sleeping and throwing up into the bowl. Louisa sits by my bedside the entire time, reading the Guardian and trying to ignore some of the idiots on my ward. I'm "Nil by Mouth" so can't have the dinner they bring me. I tell them to give it to Louisa. They kick up a fuss before checking with the nurse that loves me (because I don't make a fuss) Nurse agrees that it's better going to my incredibly hungry girlfrend than into the fucking bin. Durrrrrr.

Should probably mention that this is the first time I've needed a general anaesthetic since I was very young and had it for a tooth extraction. Retreating to the safety of films, I search my mind for frames of reference. The hospital aesthetic most closely resembles that of "Never Let Me Go" albeit much nicer. Everytime somebody in "Never Let Me Go" goes under anaesthetic it ends badly. At this point I'm being especially worried. Someone from theatre comes to get me at about 4pm and I impress everybody by walking upstairs rather than insisting on being wheeled like a scumbag might. I apologise profusely for hurling saliva onto the floor of the theatre before they get me all setup with those groovy EKG probes and everything. One of the surgeons makes a crack about my heart rate racing before offering to make it all better. Everything goes a bit blurry

It takes me 2 hours to wake up from a 20minute procedure. The surgeon explains everything to me, although since I have absolutely no idea where the fuck I am, none of it really sinks in. It's later relayed to me that they found the blockage something like 12" below my larynx, which apparantly goes against all medical convention. How the fuck does one get something stuck that far down!? The giant metal tube they jammed into my food-hole must've been fitted with some kind of grabbing system because they've supposedly pulled most of the offending morsel back up my throat and out of my mouth. The remainder of it is small enough to just be pushed into my acid sack. I've basically been used as a fairground claw game for highly trained and educated surgeons. I spend the rest of the evening drifting in and out of sleep struggling to get properly comfortable. I'm not dehydrated because of the drip but I'm still more thirsty than I've ever been in my life. 4 more hours until I can drink anything, and even then I'm only allowed sterile water. At this point I would pay 50 for a Sprite.

Bored as all hell in my hospital bed and not allowed to leave, I resort to just sleeping as much as my sore throat and chest will let me. I struggle through breakfast and dinner before I'm told that I'm pretty much good to go. They're baffled as to how a young non-smoker can have this happen to them, but they're gonna chalk it up to misfortune and forego any of the tedious barium swallow tests so I can just go home. HOORAY!