Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I've done it again

A long time ago, I all of a sudden couldn't hear out of one of my ears. Turns out, I had something called eustachian tube dysfunction. Who knew there was such a thing? (Besides Caitlin, who, if I remember correctly, had it in both ears around the same time I had it.)

Then again, my ears clogged up and I couldn't hear, but that time, it turned out to be just wax.

Then, you may remember, this last February, I pulled an intercostal which made it really painful to breathe.

And now, to add to my list of strange maladies, last night, I'm pretty sure I pulled my sternohyoid muscle. It was really quite awful and very scary. (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you are squeamish.) Right after I put Lillian to bed, I started feeling queasy. No big deal, I just went and assumed my position in the bathroom. What followed was the most frightening vomiting session that I've ever had. I was heaving so badly that I couldn't breathe, and I was starting to panic so I was trying to call Tyler to save me somehow, but I was choking and couldn't call out and couldn't breathe. It was awful.

When it was safely all over, Tyler rushed in to see if I was OK. (I figured out early on that he wasn't ever going to stand and hold my hair back. Ever.) I was shaken but I was OK except for the fact that it felt like I had something stuck in my throat, like a walnut. This was odd as I had had lentil soup for dinner. I drank some water, but it was still there. I ate a popsicle, but it was still there. Then it started hurting. It hurt to swallow. I started think all sorts of things, like my vitamin from the afternoon and somehow lodged itself in my throat. Or that I had accidentally swallowed a walnut and it was coming back to haunt me. As I was attempting to fall asleep, my ideas got crazier and crazier, like I had torn something and I now had a tracheoesophageal fistula and my stomach contents were spilling into my lungs and I was going to get pneumonia or suffocate by morning. Or I'd imagine I could feel my lodged vitamin slip quietly down my throat and into my stomach. I'd test it by swallowing again. Nope, still there. I had dreams of going to the emergency room and the doctor taking forceps and reaching down my throat to pull out all sorts of things: crayons, a mouse, the cursed vitamin. I talked myself out of anything really serious as I could breathe just fine. I also talked myself out of the vitamin/walnut(/mouse/crayon) theory as I could swallow OK, excepting the pain.

As I was eating my cereal this morning, I decided on the pulled muscle. Having consulted my anatomy book, I've decided on the the sternohyoid. It seems to be at the exact place that it hurts.

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

i'm glad you didn't die, and that the doc didn't pull a rabbit or something out of your throat. you should try to pull more normal muscles, at least that way the diagnosis is easier.

Myriah Cohen said...

I didn't read this post.

Thanks for the heads up.

Cheryl said...

this makes me feel like I'm sitting right there in the room with you. That makes me smile. I'm glad that you'll pull through.

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