My Fun-Filled Wednesday

This is probably the most boring kind of blog entry imaginable: what I did yesterday!  But it was a relatively eventful day, at least for me, so I thought I would just set it down in prose for your enjoyment.

I spent my morning doing my first stint -- in what I hope is a weekly ritual -- volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.  I figure if Jimmy Carter can do it at 80, so can I.  From an altruistic standpoint, I'd like to do something to help my fellow man, just like us all, right?  And from a non-altruistic standpoint, when people ask me what I am doing with my time while unemployed, I want a better answer than "nothing" or worse, "writing a screenplay."

So off I went to the bare-wood-frame condo complex going up near me in Glendale.  Maybe 6 units, 1200 square feet each.  Right next to the highway, but what do you want for free?  The deal is, if you are a low-income family, and want a Habitat house, you have to put in a certain number of hours yourself toward the building of the house.  Which I think is cool.

Arriving at the site, I was a little nervous, because Accuweather said it was going to be in the 100's.  Yikes.  In anticipation of a sweat-fest, I chose shorts.  But of course, it was a quite pleasant 80 with a cool breeze.  And I dinged my legs several times on bare wood planks, due to the shorts.  Great.

My image of myself pounding manly nails with a big manly hammer were dashed as the Construction Manager assigned me to clean-up duty on the plywood-and-bare-rafters roof of one of the buildings.  Me and a tight-lipped 17-year-old, who must have been doing the "I need good stuff for my college applications" deal.  So the two of us spent five hours sweeping up sawdust and nails.  Yippee.  Five hours.  I have to tell you, at the end of that five hours, I was exhausted.  Ready for a nap.  Maybe I need to get in better shape.

Then, at around 6 PM, I headed off to meet my friend Beth for a drink at the Ahmanson Theater and then to take in a performance of "The Drowsy Chaperone."  I hadn't seen Beth in maybe two years, so we had a lot of catching up to at the lovely outdoor bar outside the theater.  The show itself -- I loved it.  It's a sort of parody of and love letter to the cheesy old broadway musicals like "No No Nanette" that didn't really make a lick of sense, but had a jaunty romantic comedy story and upbeat, silly songs.  Really fun.  It was Beth's idea to go to dinner after the show, which I was reluctant about -- I'm usually in bed by ten!  But after the show I was hungry and full of energy, only to have Beth say, "I'm tired."  Hmmph.

That's when the night really got interesting.  I went home and boiled some spaghetti.  You know the way I like it -- with just butter and parmesan cheese on it.  Almost dry with so much cheese.  Some of you might remember a previous blog entry in which I choked on some food.  Well it happened again.  As I was snarfing down the spaghetti and chasing it with delicious Sprite Zero, suddenly I started choking.  I could not breathe, unless you call ghastly croaking panicky attempts to draw in air breathing.  Ellen immediately got behind me to give me the Heimlich, with an decidedly frightened look on her face.  I really could not breathe.  But either from her efforts or just from my body trying to do its job, I spit up the Sprite Zero and some of the spaghetti.  So now I could at least take in air.

But unlike the last time this happened, I was not able to eventually swallow or spit up whatever was blocking.  I could not swallow any water without it backing up in my throat and potentially blocking my windpipe again.  Not a good feeling.  As I sat waiting for the blockage to go either up or down, even the saliva I was producing was backing up in my throat, and I had to spit it up occasionally as Ellen looked on, concerned.  Minutes ticked by, and nothing changed.  After about an hour, I acquiesced to Ellen's plea that we go to the local Adventist Hospital Emergency Room.

By this point it's past midnight, and I was feeling pretty bad.  The sensation that nothing, not even liquid could go down, and having to throw up saliva every once in a while, is a very unsettling and discomfiting situation.

It took maybe two hours to see the doctor, which is really not bad for an Emergency Room.  I thought for sure the doctor would just sedate me, snake a tube down my gullet, and poke out whatever was in the way.  But he advised that the esophagus is delicate, and snaking tubes down there willy-nilly was "counter-indicated."  So, as I was spitting and retching into my home-brought garbage can, they proceeded to try various muscle relaxers to try and get my food tube to loosen up.  First, it was a little tab of nitroglycerine under my tongue.  I thought -- are they trying to explode my blockage?  Well that didn't work.  So then we proceeded to intravenous (since I couldn't swallow anything) Glucagon, a more powerful muscle relaxer.  It's a synthetic version of a hormone naturally produced by, I kid you not, the Isles of Langerhans. (One trivia note -- check out Weird Al Yankovick's Beach Boys parody song "Pancreas" for a mention of both Glucagon and the Isles of Langerhans.)

Well one side effect of Glucagon, at least on me, is violent, wrenching nausea.  This is pretty much my least favorite feeling in the world, so far.  I prefer the kidney stone to this.  But, I admit, I've never been shot or broken a limb.  Yet.

Anyway I get a severe bout of technicolor lunch, but not much comes up.  So they double the dosage.  This time I really wretch.  It's excruciating.  But then -- it came up!  The big stuck wad of spaghetti.  After a period of recovery from the puking, I feel much better.

The doctor, the nurse, and then a jaunty trio of other nurses who sauntered past my screen arm-in-arm with a "can we see your spaghetti" -- they all expressed amazement that I could wolf down such a large relatively unchewed piece of food.  They all scolded me -- chew your food!  In fact my release form included the rather parental-sounding, chastising "Be sure to chew your food properly."

It was 4:30 AM, Ellen and I were exhausted, and we headed home.  With not a little bit of the feeling of -- it's nice to be alive.

Today, my throat is so sore I can barely talk, and I'm very tired (couldn't sleep much past 8:30) but I feel fine.  Aren't you sorry you read this entry?