Aspiration

People often start terrible pieces with, "The dictionary defines [] as []." In that spirit, the dictionary lists three meanings of aspiration. One of them is a linguistic term, having to do with the buildup of air before a consonant sound one is hope or desire; one is taking a foreign object or fluid into the lungs. Actually it is more complicated, but these three will suffice.

Today I was drinking some miso soup and almost choked on something in it, but it was alright. But then my chest started hurting pretty bad about once a minute. I went back to work and it kept hurting, and I thought maybe I was going to vomit, which would have been a relief, actually, but I instead just got really pale and sweaty, so I asked for somebody to take me to the hospital. I got a chest X-ray, but they didn't see anything, so they sent me to another hospital to get a CT scan, which also turned up nothing, despite the pain not going away at all. They couldn't help me out, but they gave me some stomach medicine (?). The pain was in my chest and back, where the food was probably stuck, but they couldn't find it and figured it would just go away, but told me to come back if I had a fever or difficulty breathing.

So I went back to work, but just lay down in a side room for an hour or so. They sent me to my friend's house instead of home because they didn't want me to be alone if it got worse, so I was there a while. Then I ate dinner and the pain just went away as if by magic, so my theory is that something was stuck in my throat just above the glottis or thereabouts, and eating knocked it back out. I don't know why that didn't happen when I ate lunch, but whatever. I am happy not to be doubled over in pain.

It really hurt, but probably not that bad overall. When the pain stopped, which it was doing all the time before returning, there was nothing wrong, and it was not nearly as painful as that time I had gastritis or whatever and they thought I might have had appendicitis or something. But it was up there. Anyway, I'm fine now.