Why can't I swallow?

If you follow my twitter feed, you saw that I spend the day in misery and the night in the ER, from what I had been describing as “I can’t swallow anything” or something similar. What the heck does this mean? Am I choking? Am I gagging? What would cause that?

When I went in, I did not know what was happening but now I do: Impacted Food. Eosinophilic Esophagitis. Dysphagia.

WTF are those you may ask. I know I did.

Once I got home and the drugs subsided enough so that I could think coherently, I went searching for answers, and here is the best explanation I have found so far:

Eosinophilic esophagitis decreases the ability of the esophagus to stretch and accommodate mouthfuls of swallowed food. As a result, solid foods (particularly solid meats) have difficulty passing through the esophagus.

When solid food sticks in the esophagus, it causes an uncomfortable sensation in the chest, The sticking of food in the esophagus is referred to as dysphagia.

If the solid food then passes into the stomach, the discomfort subsides, and the individual can resume eating. If the solid food does not pass into the stomach, individuals often regurgitate the food by inducing vomiting before they can resume eating.

Rarely, the solid food becomes impacted, that is, it can neither pass into the stomach nor be regurgitated. The impacted solid food causes chest pain that can mimic a heart attack, and repeated spitting up of saliva that cannot be swallowed because of the obstruction in the esophagus. Individuals with impacted food are unable to eat or drink. To relieve the obstruction, a doctor usually will have to insert a flexible endoscope through the mouth and into the esophagus to remove the impacted food.

from here: http://www.medicinenet.com/eosinophilic_esophagitis/page2.htm

Wow. That is an almost perfect description of what I have been going through. Even the ‘not able to swallow my own saliva’ thing. Not fun.

I went to the hospital and they brought in a huge machine, gave me super powered drugs and stuck a camera down my throat. It was the third or fourth time I had been ‘scoped’, so I knew the routine. If I could have checked in to ‘getting scoped’ on FourSquare, I would be mayor now.

So now I am home, feeling bizarre sore and loopy. Gonna rest some and see how I feel tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone on twitter for their well wishes. It helped alot.