8.29.2008

The Shrimp

Well, lets tell the whole back story...

I worked the game last night. Which among other things means I had to go up to the press box and eat in the dining area there. Okay, I guess I didn't have to... I ordered a yummy shrimp, sun dried tomatoes, mushrooms, angel hair pasta and red sauce topped with a little cheese and oregano. Like I said... Yummy!

I take my concoction to the press level desks above home plate and sit down with a notebook to watch the game, eat, and write some notes down for a meeting the next day.

With my second bite a shrimp jumped to the back of my throat. No shit! It went directly from the fork to the back of my throat! I'm sitting in an open area with dozens of reporters, all of the Padres PR staff, several security folks, Local TV Personalities and ironically the CEO of the Padres. My first thought is to try to cough up this shrimp, but it's not in my airway it's in my esophagus. So coughing does nothing. My only two options are to try to throw up in front of all these people or swallow. Guess what I did?

So for the next three hours I tried to clear this shrimp from my esophagus. I had thought being a slimy shrimp that it might just pass right on through, but that was not my luck. I went through 4 bottles of water, a cookie, and a diet coke in my efforts. Nothing went down and all of that stuff came back up. Of course I was doing this in the bathroom during game time so I would try to time my puking to coincide with the bathroom being empty.... By 9PM I had some work to do and as long as I did not try to eat or drink anything I wasn't all that uncomfortable. I finished my game day duties, waited for traffic to die down and went home. In case you were wondering the Pads won!

Once home I tried again to clear this miserable crustacean to no avail.

This morning I tried again several times. Now I had some pain due to the repeated hard swallowing and puking. Still that little fucker was stuck in there!

So I called the doc. Went to urgent care at 9AM. By 10AM they sent me to Scripps hospital in La Jolla. By noon I was on a gurney with an IV of sugar water chilling me and electrodes attached to me at various points. Endoscopy here I come!

They knocked me out with something that literally took seconds from the moment they put it into my IV to my head swimming and my vision going all wacky. Of course that experience lasted all of 10 seconds...

An hour later I was waking up. Somehow I was dressed. I have no idea how this happened. Most of this time is pretty fuzzy so I got the replay from Mandi. Plus they gave me pictures as a souvenir! I'd be happy to scan them and email them to you if you like. Surprisingly NONE of the nurses laughed at ANY of my jokes! Bitches! Actually they took very good care of me and laughed at me only a little.

The doc found a whole shrimp at the bottom of my esophagus. He pushed it down into my stomach, after taking a picture of it. He then took a few biopsies and shot another picture of what appears to be scar tissue that is causing food to be impacted in my esophagus. I have to go back in one month to get a repeat of today except this time they'll try to stretch my esophagus and remove or deal with the scar tissue.

I think next time I'll just hit the salad bar...

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