Monday, December 10, 2012

How I almost died and the spirit spoke to me twice in one evening

 

Thursday morning last week I don't think I ate early enough, and after I ate it hurt so bad that I spent most of the morning lying on the couch.  (No computer, even.)  Russ has been super busy at work and so I asked him to meet me at Costco after work for a "date" and then we went out to dinner for my free birthday dinner @ IHOP.  (Free is a nice price.)  So we were at Costco walking around looking for the ziploc bags and we walked past this row that we never usually walk by.  I saw what was on the shelf there and thought "hm....that might help my stomach."  So I said to him, "Russ, we should buy some coconut water to see if it will help my stomach."  HOW RANDOM IS THAT?  Coconut water???  So we did, and when we got home and I googled it, there are lots of anecdotal reports of people using coconut water to help their gastritis.  I was a little surprised, and a lot laughing.  Here’s hoping it helps.  It tastes kind of nasty, but so far I’ve had some for 3 mornings and not had stomach pain for 3 days…


That night I was getting ready for bed and taking all of the stuff I take to keep from having hip pain while I'm sleeping.  You know, calcium, magnesium, potassium, all of my "ends in ium" minerals.  The calcium pills are always big, and this time the ones I got seem even bigger.  They are a full inch long and as big around as my pinky finger.  Normally I don't have a problem taking them but Thursday night I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing and I was reading while I was taking them and for some reason, they got stuck in my throat going down.  Not in my mouth, but down farther than that.  It was a strange and unpleasant feeling.  Two things happened.  My brain panicked.  Like "There is a pill stuck in my throat, what am I going to do!!!"  I started drinking great big gulps of water trying to wash the pill out of my throat.  But at the same time another part of my brain said calmly, "I need to drink some hot water."  Now the thing is, in our new house hot water takes A LONG time to come to the sinks.  Seriously, we say 5 minutes though it's probably 3 minutes, but that really is a long time to wait for hot water.  So I turned on the hot water, and in the meantime I kept trying to drink a big enough mouthful of the cold water that it would wash the calcium pills down my throat.  That didn't work, and although I could still breathe fine (and I'm clueless enough about anatomy that I don’t know if it ever would have interfered with my breathing) I could feel the area around the stuck pill getting sore, and starting to tighten.  That was kind of scary and I started wondering if I was going to have to go to the emergency room again.  But in the back of my mind this thought said "I just need the warm water."  It was really starting to hurt and I was thinking that I'd better go tell Russ what was going on, when the water finally got hot.  I filled the glass, took a great big (hot) drink, and down the pills slid.  I was afraid to really trust it, so I took a couple more big drinks just to be sure.  And then I ignored the magnesium still waiting to be taken (I couldn't take any other pills that night!) and went to tell Russ about what had just happened. 

 

I’m always so relieved when I realize that the spirit has been working in my life, and more importantly, that I’ve heard it.  Like “oh good, it’s still happening.”  I wonder if I’ll ever get past that…

5 comments:

  1. Sorry about the pill. I have had that happen. It is HORRIBLE! Montana is taking chewable calcium because she can't swallow the giant pills.I hope your issues keep improving.

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  2. I have a narrow airway and pills get stuck going down, so I make sure to eat something afterward. The hot water idea might help, too.

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  3. Woah, hot water? I never thought of that! That happens to me fairly regularly because I swallow so many at once - or at least I did before I got pregnant and swallowing pills made me gag, lol. I usually just have to wait a minute or two and then it will dislodge. The weirdest/funniest is if I get a whole enzyme stuck going down... when I swallow it rattles!

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  4. I have the WORST trouble swallowing pills- they always get stuck and it is so uncomfortable. I usually eat a baby carrot to push them down and that does the trick for me...but I've never had my airway start to constrict- that would be really scary. Eric amazes me- he can swallow multiple pills without any water!

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  5. And Eric runs barefoot, so we can't count him as "normal" :)

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