Fire and Ice

Things were sort of ok - in that way that it was almost possible to forget that I had any issue at all - and just when I thought I could almost live that way, they got bad. THEN they got worse. Since yesterday evening I've not been able to eat or drink anything - not even water. Every sip of water I take (because that is all I've dared try today) is a massive undertaking and makes me feel like I'm going to absolutely choke. I even spat out one of those tiny sips because I wasn't confident that it would not kill me.  So yeah, got the old headache back and I am 100% thirsty. I am also slowly losing my focus and I can see that my legs will start to wobble very soon. This will also inevitably trigger my anxiety and perhaps even keep me up at night, further making me tired, grumpy and a nightmare.  Previous bad days have eventually turned into good ones so I'm hoping that this does, too.  The struggle continues. 

A week ago I spent around 30 minutes swallowing the thickest, chalkiest, heaviest smoothie I've ever had. It tasted sort of like strawberry but a very small cup of it (the size of a shot glass) weighed way more than its size would suggest. It also had the texture of plaster and was about as hard to swallow. I mean, I know that this is not the easiest thing for me to do right now, but I bet that even people without a swallowing challenge would struggle. Why was I doing this? As a medical test, of course. This has many names (videofluoroscopy was the name on my letter) but most people referred to it as the Barium swallow test . The idea here is that you swallow this heavy, thick smoothie while professionals watch your insides with X-rays and see what happens. There are several different kinds of swallows that I had to do: small ones, quick ones, facing sideways, facing the other ways, and even - God forbid - lying down. I even had to chew a marshmallow coated in the stuff, all in th