Wednesday

Lets start at the beginning.  I have a hard time swallowing.  This is because my esophagus has decreased motility.  It is not very fun, trust me.  Also, in just the last 2 months or so I break out in hives everytime I sweat.  That is not fun either, I promise.  So after getting home from work on Wednesday morning I took an Allegra (prescribed by my dermatologist to help with the hives).  I have had a difficult time swallowing pills for a very long time, but thought I would be okay, the pill is relatively small and is round.  Well that was about 8am.  The pill lodged in my throat.  I will spare you the details, but lets just say at 2pm the pill was still lodged in my throat and I was still unable to swallow even a drop of liquid.  Things were going really well at this point.  I decided that I probably should not be alone since there were several times when I couldn't breath at all during the previous 6 hours.  So, I headed over to my parents house.  No one was home.  Hmm.  I called my doctor and they said that if I could be there in 3 minutes (2:20) I could come, or I would have to wait until 2:50.  I promised them I would be there in 3 minutes, they told me to drive safe and I headed over.  I got there and everyone could see I was in a fair amount of distress.  (gagging and wretching for 6 hours will do that to you).  They got me back to a room (although they first had to get my weight and height...seriously- priorities people).  The medical assistant person took my blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate.  My blood pressure was 135/94 (I think), my heart rate was very near 120.  Her comment was "your blood pressure is normal, except the bottom number is a little high".  What?!?  For those of you not in the health profession, the high end of normal for blood pressures is 120/80.  I was definitely hypertensive.  And, she was not concerned about my heart rate at all.  Normal heart rate is definitely less that 100.  The doctor was concerned when he came in because he immediately took my pulse again.  Then he told me that I would be getting an emergency endoscopy.  Ooh, fun.

After a couple phone calls he told me to go over to the hospital.  I was to go through emergency so they could admit me, then I was to go to endoscopy, they would be waiting for me.  I got to the hospital, my sister-in-law Liz was waiting for me (I had called to ask if she would be so kind as to drive me home from the hospital when the test was over since I would be sedated).  I won't go into the details, but an hour after we arrived at the hospital we finally found the endoscopy lab.  Apparently the staff at the hospital still do not know where things are.

They got me set up immediately, sedated me and got to work.

They couldn't fit the endoscope down my throat so they had to use a bronchoscope (a much smaller scope used to look at the lungs), which barely fit.  Then they had to work really hard to dislodge the pill.  So apparently my throat is about 11mm in diameter, whereas normal throats are around 20mm in diameter.

It has been almost two days and it still hurts to eat (my throat tore when he tried to dilate it).  So, I am still on a liquid/soft diet.  Which mainly consists of mashed potatoes.  Good times.

I am hungry.