Ugh–what a day

The original message for this post (which was going to be posted yesterday) was “What a difference a day makes”.

 

Here’s the post as I wrote it.

 

Well, even though it’s colder and everything that melted has frozen over, I’m having SUCH a better day today!

 

The good day partly started last night after a successful run through of Laramie Project.  Even though I was in a funky mood yesterday, it never ceases to amaze me how much a show and it’s rehearsals actually end up energizing me, instead of exhausting me.  I got a reasonably good night’s sleep as well.  So that’s gotta count for something. :)

 

Today I got a call from my accountant that my tax return was ready to submit, and I just needed to sign.  It turns out I’m getting back a good bit more than I had planned on.  Added to that I forgot I’m getting a stipend for a conference session I organized.

 

I also managed to resolve a server problem that has been causing me issues since early January.

 

So overall, it’s been a good day.  Let’s hope things continue moving up!

Almost as I finished typing this, I was eating my meatball sandwich and I ended up biting off more than I could chew, as it were.  I have had some times in my life when eating things that I have difficulty swallowing it.  It’s typically when eating meat (steak, chicken, scallops, hot dog), but I’ve had the issue with soft foods too (like pancakes).  At the risk of too much information, the issue is that I will swallow something and it’ll go part way down my esophagus, but won’t drop into my stomach.  It’ll sit there halfway down.  One thing to note is that this doesn’t affect my ability to breath, so I wasn’t in any immediate danger, just in pain.  Sometimes a glass of water will push it down, other times it’s just too painful to do that.  This was one of those times.  I then tried to move it “up” and out (you can figure out what I mean) and that wasn’t working either.   I managed to expel some of it, but was still having issues and I noticed I now had blood mixed in with the bile that I was throwing up.  I ended up having some of the WPI EMTs in the production I’m in drive me up to the ER down the street.  By the time I got there, the last bit of food passed, but I wanted to make sure there wasn’t an issue with the blood.  Five hours later, I got an x-ray and shortly thereafter spoke with the doctor.  Good news is that I had no damage and I was fine. 

 

At this point I need to follow up with my PCP to get a referral to a GI specialist for more testing.   I have had testing for this very issue before (endoscopy, barium swallow) but it didn’t show any issues.  Since it’s happening again, it’s time for more tests. 

 

Until I know what’s happening, I’m going to be chewing like you teach little children (chew it 40 times!) and sticking to liquid or softer foods when possible.

 

So I guess I was just a bit premature in declaring yesterday such a great day.