Bone
This was my
second visit to the Emergency room in less than a month. The first time, I
thought I was having a heart attack, after I pulled a muscle in my chest
lifting a refrigerator.
This time, I
thought I had a chicken bone stuck in my throat.
At least,
something stabbed me when I swallowed, and since Susan's family served chicken
earlier that night, I assumed the worst.
The doctors
and nurses here giggled at me, clearly disbelieving everything I had to say.
"If
there's something down there," they told me. "We'll find it."
The problem
is nobody bothered to actually look down my throat. The minute I came through
the door, the nurse said: "Take him for an X-ray."
I protested,
asking if he shouldn't take a peek first.
The doctor
gave me an evil look and asked: "Now just who is the doctor here?"
I accepted
his suggestion and under went the cold hands and cold machine, the hum and the
grumble, and the clearing throats of the attendants who frowned at the results
and then at me. They took their picture of my chest, my throat, my shoulder, though
I could see from the glint in their eyes, they suspected the real problem
higher up on my shoulders, and a condition no x-ray would find a cure for. In
fact -- to make sure the bill was sufficiently well-endowed, they passed me
from one room to another, from one set of cold hands to the next, each forming
his or her conclusion about what might be wrong, each frowning at me when they
came upon the blank x-ray. Finally, I had worked my way back to the doctor who
just shook his head at me, saying, he didn't see anything wrong with me at all.
"But it
hurts, Doc," I said, and cringed as the imagined bone pinched me in the
throat again.
The doctor
seeing this, nodded gravely.
"Perhaps
it would be a good idea to have look," he said,
then stared down my open mouth, humming and grumbling as much as the machines.
"I don't see... wait a minute, I do see something. Nurse, give me a set of
forcepts."
A moment
later, the doctor had retrieved a piece of spice, something like an extended
grain, Susan's mother had used in the meal.
"There's
the culprit," the doctor said, holding it aloft, drawing nods from the
others, and increased chuckles. "It would have dissolved sooner or
later."
Amazingly, I
was cured. But by then, I was having trouble swallowing again, but only because
the doctor had handed me my bill.