I am not normally one to jump on social media to talk about a recent medical procedure - unless it involves a funny drug story.
The background is simple. I’ve been having difficulty swallowing lately. That’s the long and short of it. For weeks it was more of an ongoing annoyance than a cause for freaking out. I figured I could finally lose that ten extra pounds I put on over the holidays while waiting to see if my condition changed at all. My next step, when the pain got worse, was to jump on Google and begin some ad-hoc self-diagnosis. It didn’t make sense to visit my doctor unprepared to steer him toward my own conclusions.
The list of maladies associated with difficulty swallowing is long and contains no pleasant surprises. Down at the ugly end of the scale are tumors caused by HPV. Yup fellas, we can get that too. I have a friend who’s dad - a high-rolling, heterosexual business man - is undergoing elaborate and painful treatments for throat cancer right now due to years of unprotected oral sex with strangers. Or so goes the family lore. The fact that his adult children can acknowledge his lusty prowess (hundreds of women!) while heeding the tale’s cautionary conclusion seems straight out of a Greek tragedy. Though my own much less-worldly history would suggest looking elsewhere for causes, don’t think I haven’t found a way to worry about HPV. The human mind is capable of assembling rickety narratives for the purpose of preparing ourselves for all manner of doom.
In my case the culprit is actually likely to be much more mundane. So mundane that most of us grew up watching our favorite TV shows get interrupted with commercials about it. Acid indigestion. I’ll spare you the mechanics, but simply considering the words “acid and “in-digestion” together suggests it’s not something that should be happening in your throat. Unchecked, the acid can scar the esophagus and damage the muscles responsible for swallowing, and all of this can happen without a person knowing about it. That was the scary bit for me. I always figured the warning signs would be pretty obvious, but it turns out not everyone experiences heartburn. And thus I found myself with an IV in my arm signing papers this morning to allow a camera down my throat so a specialist could “have a look around.” Oh, and there was the part about biopsies they might take, and a balloon they might inflate to help dilate my esophagus “a little.”
So where’s the funny drug story, Howell?
The short-circuiting of thoughts and language is what gives the stupefied mind it’s comedic potential. I imagine anesthesiologists must crack up all the time at the funny things their patients say. At least I hope they do. It’s sad to think all that unhinged nonsense would be wasted on humorless technicians. In my case, I never run out of things I suddenly need to say, even when my conscious mind is tumbling far away from my body into narcotic depths. This is why I asked the doctor if he didn’t wan’t to know my birthday, just as I slipped under his spell. “You've already told me your birthday, mister Howell. We’ll see you in a little bit.” Since I arrived at the hospital I had been asked multiple times what my name and date of birth were. It was the password that opened all the doors. It was the password for the drugs that took me under. I wondered if I’d need it to wake up. That was the last thought I remember having until I realized at some point during my endoscopy that someone was building a Lego castle in my throat. “It’s too big,” I struggled to say. “The castle in my throat is too big. Take some of the pieces out.” This is what I was trying to tell them. It seems that my mind was a good ways away from the lego castle and the discomfort it was causing, but still I needed to let them know there was a problem. What I heard back from above the surface was, “Just relax, mister Howell. We’ll need you to swallow. Just try and swallow.” I made my throat have a little feeling - something like what they seemed to be asking for, but I wasn’t sure what “swallow” was supposed to feel like from such a great distance. Just then a chorus of voices sang “Very good, mister Howell. Very good.” and suddenly the Lego castle was gone, and I fell backward slowly into nothingness.
The best damn glass of ice water of all time was being held out to me by a nurse. I blessed her like I thought I was a priest. I had to stop talking to take a drink. It seems I was partway through telling her a story as I began to regain consciousness. Apparently what I had thought was a Lego castle tuned out to be a Lionel train set. I was telling this to the nurse as if it were a critical plot twist in my adventure. “Can you believe it? A train set was in my throat,” I said. Meanwhile, Kae was helping me to get dressed. Her well-practiced patience masked a resolve to get us both the hell out of there. “Let’s just concentrate on getting your pants on” she said. And that’s when I felt blessed by a moment of earthly perfection - a moment so subtle it could easily have been missed. The person who’s been helping me out of my pants for all those years was there to help me put them on when I finally needed it. What more could anyone ever want, I wondered. I don’t know whether I said any of that out loud, but I do remember saying “Let’s go to Old Country Buffet.”
I imagine most of us have a place of regressive, almost infantile comfort, where we dare not often go. Mine is Old Country Buffet. If the wheels ever do come off my little wagon, you will find me in an Old Country Buffet. With two desserts. “How about Udi’s instead,” Kae suggested. “They have pancakes. We can get them to-go.” Being of sound mind, she wasn’t about to sit across from an opiated brunch companion who thinks he had people playing with toys in his throat. And the truth was, round two (or was it three by now?) of the drug’s after-effects were pulling me back down into incoherence.
A short while later I was at my own kitchen table staring down into a to-go carton of blueberry pancakes. I couldn’t possibly eat them. Not that I was in any pain from my procedure. It was more a matter of my wobbly and tenuous version of reality giving out on me again. Still I thought, I’ll sit here in front of my pancakes, pretending to eat until Kae goes off to work. Hadn’t I insisted she buy this breakfast? Just then I found myself being led upstairs by the hand, and into the guest bedroom which was darker and cozier than my own bed, or so I thought. Kae was still in the kitchen. I never did get a clear look at the person who led me up the stairs, but her name was Versed Fentanyl and she had the whole afternoon planned out for me in the nether regions of narcosis.
I opened my eyes to see both dogs sitting nearby in the rays of late afternoon sun. Both were staring at me, panting. The cat, also wide awake, sat beside me on the bed and regarded me with somewhat less concern. I had returned finally - with my own Greek chorus of pets wooing me back into their realm. And so it was I found the floor perfectly solid under my feet, and the handrail on the stairs altogether unyielding. From here it seemed my world would be less magical but a lot more trustworthy, and I was happy for that. I remembered a book I read a while ago about a Carmelite nun who experienced intense mystical visions that were accompanied by debilitating headaches which turn out to be caused by epilepsy. The book is called Lying Awake, by Mark Salzman. He gives his character the choice between medical intervention that will save her life, or continued religious ecstasy which will plunge her into mental illness. The novel is not a simple tale of science-versus-religion, rather it finds its meaning exploring the existential nuances of a life of faith and questions what it is that makes experience authentic. Like the author, I suspect many of these big conundrums are false dichotomies. What is essential is that we seek to make meaning and relevance of our experiences. This is what I was thinking when I remembered my pancakes. A wave of anxiety washed over me as I considered they may not have been real, but only a concoction of a junked-up brain. I needed them to be real, not only for reasons having to do with mental continuity, but because I was extraordinarily hungry. I hadn’t eaten in almost a full day. So I made my way to the kitchen and paused to steel myself just before opening the refrigerator. But there they were, as truthful and reassuring as leftover pancakes can be - which, it turns out, is quite reassuring. I devoured them like a pothead takes to a bag of chips, but not so quickly that I couldn’t taste that they were genuinely delicious, as leftovers go. What’s more, for the first time in weeks my throat didn’t hurt. Not even a little. It could have been the drugs, or the throat dilation, I didn’t care. For the time being, that alone was worth celebrating.
