I set out to write this article to grieve for Dad; to try to make sense of what I witnessed; to categorize my thoughts; to come to grips with my anger at Dad for both his narcissism and choosing to die instead of choosing to live. I realize that he missed his wife – my Mom – of 66 years. But he chose to die to be with her instead of live to be with his kids.
As I mentioned earlier in this article, I suffer from esophageal problems, like my father did at the end of his life. Mine is caused by a hiatal hernia. Dad had a hiatal hernia. Mom had developed one late in life. Dad’s Mom had one. They seem to run in our family. But unlike the rest of them, I often get food stuck in the esophagus – usually at the spot where the diaphragm strangles the esophagus. Over the years, I have made about a dozen trips to the ER for blockages that I could not clear without help. There, the treatment options are limited. They can either anesthetize me and use an endoscope, through my mouth and down my esophagus to push the blockage through and into the stomach, or more recently with the availability of a new drug, give me a powerful muscle relaxant that relaxes the esophagus and the diaphragm just enough to let the food pass into the stomach.
The last 2 trips to the ER, including one in July 2019 after returning home from visiting Dad, the muscle relaxant did the trick. The time before that required the surgery.
Recently, since the beginning of March 2020, and since the coronavirus has gained an impressive foothold in my neck of the woods, I have struggled with food blockages on several occasions. Most of the time, I just must calm myself, and then drink a bit of water and swallow some air, and I can push the blockage through. It usually only takes a few minutes. On three occasions, I was unable to clear the blockage in a few minutes. On three occasions, it started to look like I would need to visit the ER – something I do not want to do in this age of Covid19. Instead of going to the ER, I tried praying instead. Miraculously, the first two times, the blockage cleared immediately – almost magically. The third time, I did not pray. I worked hard to clear that blockage for more than an hour and a half.
The body recognizes the blockage as a bad thing. An acute blockage prevents everything from going down or coming up, including saliva, swallowed air, and nasal drainage. The automatic response of the body to a blockage is adrenaline, followed by pumping tons of saliva and thick nasty nasal mucus down the esophagus. To clear a blockage, my first task is to settle the body’s natural responses and vomit out the saliva and nasal mucus. Once the esophagus is clear, drink a little bit of a fizzy liquid – I choose ice cold diet coke. Drinking too much will fill up the esophagus which will interfere with my breathing. Once the esophagus is partially filled with diet coke, I walk around, put my hands up in the air, try to let the stomach sink below the diaphragm, jump up and down. The fizzy nature of the liquid works to break up some blockages. The weight of the liquid adds pressure to the blockage. Jumping up and down, especially with hard landings, adds downward force to the weight of the liquid already exerting pressure on the blockage. And if I am lucky, the blockage will drop through into the stomach.
After a few minutes, your normal saliva flow will fill up the remainder of the esophagus and interfere with breathing. At that time, and preferably before that time, I must vomit it all out, including any pieces of the blockage that the fizzy liquid has separated from the blockage. Then I must re-calm myself, re-clear the saliva and nasal mucus, and finally once the esophagus is completely empty, begin again. It is a very gross process.
I repeated this process more than a dozen times with this third bad blockage. Each attempt saps my energy. After 90 minutes, I was physically drained and shaking. I resigned myself that I would have to go to the ER.
I prayed. Nothing. I pleaded. Nothing. Then, almost like magic, 20 minutes later, when I was trying to calm myself down for another attempt, the blockage cleared on its own, like it had help. I had never, until this one time, had a blockage clear when the esophagus was empty. I have only had blockages clear when the esophagus was full of liquid or a combination of liquid and a swallowed air bubble.
Did these three bad blockages happen so God could show me that he is there? Did he clear them to show me that he is watching? He is listening.
I do not know. But it is certainly worth paying attention to and exploring further.
Since then, I pray for my wife. I pray for my sister. I pray for my family. I pray for people that I worry about. I pray for inner peace for myself and others. I pray nearly every day.
There seems to be something to this power of prayer stuff. God has shown Himself to me.
What happens next may be up to me. I have certainly moved from a C3 to a C2. I am not certain what I have to do to move to a C1. But I think God will show me that step when He thinks I am ready.