Going into the month, I knew December would be expensive, what with Christmas presents, one last big payment to finish off my student loans, car/rental insurance and my trip to Arkansas. Its gotten even more so over the last few days, starting first with paying off the broken headlight that happened on that trip. Yesterday, things got potentially quite worse. At dinner, after my first few bites, I had an issue where I could no longer swallow anything. This has happened a couple of times before and usually I'm just able to eventually take in enough water to choke it down or burp an airhole clear. I've had it once before where it was bad and I couldn't even keep any water down but it eventually cleared up after not trying to ingest anything for several hours. Yesterday was of this bad kind. After an hour of continually coughing up water and vomiting up saliva, Mom and I headed into Urgent Care. We waited in Urgent Care for an hour before I even got into triage but they sent me back right away after that where the doctor there confirmed that I had an esophageal obstruction from whence they sent me on to the ER. Mom drove me to the ER where I haven't been in quite a while and there I got to experience a whole range of fun activities. After consulting with a doctor, they sent me in for a chest x-ray which didn't show a whole lot; namely, they couldn't particularly see any blockage. I was still puking up all my spit and wasn't even trying to keep water down so no one was going to accuse me of faking at least. The next plan after that was to hook me up with a bunch of drugs to relax both me and my esophagus in the hopes that would help pass the roast that we believe was stuck at the bottom of my throat. They gave me some anti-nausea medication in anticipation of giving me glucagon to help relax my lower esophagus. At that time though, word came down from endoscopy to send me down there so I could get scoped instead. I was then wheeled through the bowels of the hospital where I apologized to the nurses for making them coming in on a weekend while they hooked me up to a bunch of cords and tubes. They knocked me out and from what I've been told, gave me an EGD (esophagogastroduodenoscopy) which consists of sending a scope down my esophagus to see the blockage and clear it out and then sent down a tube with a balloon which was then filled to dilate my esophagus. They also took a biopsy which I fully expect to come back and say I have GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease) which basically means that stomach acid occasionally comes back into my esophagus and irritates it. EDIT: The biopsy isn't for GERD, which I likely have anyway through genetics. Talking with Mom and Dad, its actually for something that has a name roughly a billion letters long that my parents don't remember and I never heard since this in the half hour or so from which I remember literally nothing. END EDIT. All of this is fun stuff that I'll get to pay for since I have a high deductible health insurance plan and had to use it in the last week of the year before it rolls over on January 1. At least I could have had this happen next week and gotten some significantly reduced elective surgery or something.
Anyway, maybe this is a sign I should stop trying to immediately catch up on all the traveling I may have missed out on and just relax and be happy. I am hoping to do some house shopping this summer and hopefully settle down soon. This certainly depends on what happens in my relationship with Lindsey. One of my first exes once told me that some of the best advice she had ever gotten on marriage was "Don't marry someone you can live with; marry someone you can't live without". This probably works for late teens/early 20s, but if its truly the case, I'm screwed because there's no one I can't live without. I can't imagine how much it would suck to lose some of those close with me, but I've gone through enough now to know that I'd get past it and through it and God will carry me through, no matter how weak I am. Instead of finding I can't live without, I'll propose marriage when I can't imagine any good reason not to be with someone forever. I'm not quite there yet, but its heading that way.
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