A Tale of Woe and Kebab Sticks
These last two weeks have been ca-ray-zee! Crazy I tells ya. I am so ready for a freakin holiday, and wouldn't ya know it? For the first time in my life when I need one, I have a holiday coming up! Next week the family and I, as well as two of my sisters and their husbands, are heading up to the beautiful Port Stephens. I am hoping for blue skies, clear water and plenty of fish just waiting to swallow my hook!
This post begins on a Tuesday, two weeks ago. Dave was getting Zee changed after a quick sponge bath and noticed she had a lump on her chest, near her nipple. It wasn't very big, and I had read that sometimes breastfed babies can develop lumpy tissue around their breasts as a result of hormones from Mum. However we both thought, given my family's dodgy health history, that a quick check-up wouldn't go astray.
So I called up the GP and made an appointment to see the doctor on Thursday. Sidebar: I have finally found an awesome lady doctor who I feel totally comfortable with, who is mostly easy to get in to see, and who I can actually understand. And the unexpected bonus? Standby for TMI here people, but this woman has the golden touch. And when I say golden touch I mean you can't even feel her touch during the dreaded *PT! Which is pretty freaking amazing seeing as she did my PT when I was 6 weeks post-partum and still a little tender in the nether regions so to speak. Are you jealous?
So anyway, I had hoped that seeing the doctor on Tuesday would be our only brush with the world of medicine for the rest of that week but I was sadly, bizarrely, wrong.
As soon as we hit spring it's BBQ season at Family Dinner Night and so on Wednesday of that week we had the usual snags, steaks and chops. For a little something different, Mum had grabbed some chicken skewers from the butcher. You know, chicken kebabs, and not the kind you consume at 4 in the morning after a hard night of drinking!
After dinner was done I was still feeling a bit peckish so I snacked on another chicken kebab while chatting and helping clean up. I was chewing the last bite and as I swallowed it I felt something sharp at the bottom of my throat. I finished swallowing and figured it was just an especially crispy bit of chicken. But on the next swallow I discovered I was wrong. Very wrong.
Have you seen The Lion King? You know the scene when Simba runs away from the hyenas after his Dad has died and Simba jumps down in to the thorns and one of the hyenas lands in them as well and comes up with thorns in his arse? And then one of the other hyenas laughs at him so he pulls the thorns out and spits them at the other one? If I had to give you a visual description of what it felt like, that would be it. That is what it felt like.
After I looked at the kebab stick and saw that some of the stick was splintered I started coughing up a storm, trying to dislodge it. I couldn't cough it up, and I couldn't swallow without being in great pain, so Mum tells me to eat some bread. The idea being, like with a fishbone, swallowing some dry bread might catch it on the way down and dislodge it. After trying to swallow almost half a roll it became clear that that strategy wasn't going to work and it was time for a trip to the GP.
So off I trundled, unable to swallow, barely able to talk, with my Step-Dad, my sister A, and Zee. The after hours GP couldn't see anything however and said I would have to go to the emergency room. So we headed up to Campbelltown emergency department and braced ourselves for the bogan. Thank God I had decided to wear my jeans to Mum's instead of my trackies, lest I be mistaken for one of the house-o's milling around.
At this point I would like to point out that I grew up in C'town and am therefore allowed to disparage the place. Because I know what it's really like and that just like anywhere it has it's crazy bogans and house-o's, but also an equally proportionate amount of the nicest people you will ever meet. But that don't make good blog post fodder now does it?!
We waited forever in the waiting room to be triaged, after which they decided to do an x-ray on my neck to see if they could see anything. They couldn't which was what I expected. After going over the x-ray the doctor said there was not much they could do as they couldn't see it just by looking and nothing showed on the x-ray. I would need to follow up with my GP the next day and get a referral to an ENT surgeon for further treatment if it didn't get better. I swear this doctor thought he was some kind of comedian, the jokes he was making. He didn't make me laugh but he did succeed in making me feel a right dickhead. Yes doctor, I'll be sure to only eat the chicken next time.
He did say though that often with that kind of problem, the tissue of the throat gets so inflamed that it naturally pushes out the foreign object and with a bit of luck that might work for me and I wouldn't have to worry about seeing an ENT. In the meantime, I just had to continue to try and deny my swallow reflex to avoid more pain. And that is not as easy as it sounds! The more you try not to swallow the more you need to. {Insert whatever 'swallowing' jokes you can think of here. Don't deny your mind hasn't strayed at least to the edges of that filthy gutter!}.
The rest of the night was not pleasant, to say the least! {Oh my mind is well and truly in that gutter now. Excuse me while I give myself a mental bitch slap}.
Thankfully the next morning, when I ate my toast, my throat had indeed inflamed enough that on one swallow of my toast the splinters came lose and it was sweet relief to my poor throat. I felt like such an idiot.
And after that good news we ended up getting good news after seeing the doctor for Zee and then getting an ultrasound. The doctor and I were right, it was just hormonal lumpiness, but as the doc said, if we hadn't checked it out my mind would have become a mess of worst-case-scenario situations. At least now I could take a breath and relax.
Or so I thought.
Then came last week. While we were sitting at the emergency department the previous week I committed the ultimate act of parent jinxification (totally a word!). I thought to myself how lucky Dave and I were that so far we had avoided the family gastro bug. So of course, come Tuesday night the following week, Punky proceeded to vomit up the entire contents of her stomach all over Dave's leg and the carpet. Thank God I was in our room putting Zee to bed is all I can say! We then completed yet another parenting right of passage at about 2:30 the next morning, that of the early morning spew clean-up and sheet swap.
And thus ushered in our worst parenting week to date. The week I have dubbed Vom Week. Much like Shark Week only with less teeth and way more interactive and smelly. Honestly, I'd been starting to worry lately that poor Zee was never going to get to play with any of her toys once she learns how to actually hold them, as Punky doesn't seem to want to share, but I was wrong. She had no problem sharing her gastro bug with me. She gave that bitch to me in all it's vomiting-inducing glory!
All I can say for last week is this. Thank God Dave was able to get his last two shifts of the week off to look after us and waited until I was mostly starting to recover before getting sick himself! And also, if that is our worst parenting week to date then we are truly blessed and doing damn well for ourselves so far!
So as you can see, we are pretty ready to pick up sticks and head up the coast for a few well-earned days at the beach. I say well-earned and not relaxing because as anyone who has holidayed with kids knows, it's not exactly the kind of relaxing you were used to on holidays pre-kids! While we are away next week I hope to spend as little time connected to the internet and as much time connected to my family as possible so there won't be an IBOT post. There probably won't be any posts.
Which is why I am going to be bringing you the first of my Lazy Girl's Guide to Christmas Shopping posts this Friday, which also includes a totally excellent giveaway, if I do say so myself. Make sure you check it out because a) you won't want to miss your chance to win. And b) you will of course all want to drink your fill of the blogging greatness that is moi, before I sign off for the week ;)
Now, please chat amongst yourselves and discuss the craziest/weirdest/most random reason you've ended up at the doctors or emergency room. I promise I will only laugh at you a little, and only to make myself feel better about the doctor laughing at me. Bastard!
And how many hits do you think this post is gonna get from weirdo randoms googling swallow and throat?
Linking up this fine Tuesday with the ever fine Essentially Jess for IBOT.
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| Yep, ask me again this time in two weeks and I will probably by saying this! |
This post begins on a Tuesday, two weeks ago. Dave was getting Zee changed after a quick sponge bath and noticed she had a lump on her chest, near her nipple. It wasn't very big, and I had read that sometimes breastfed babies can develop lumpy tissue around their breasts as a result of hormones from Mum. However we both thought, given my family's dodgy health history, that a quick check-up wouldn't go astray.
So I called up the GP and made an appointment to see the doctor on Thursday. Sidebar: I have finally found an awesome lady doctor who I feel totally comfortable with, who is mostly easy to get in to see, and who I can actually understand. And the unexpected bonus? Standby for TMI here people, but this woman has the golden touch. And when I say golden touch I mean you can't even feel her touch during the dreaded *PT! Which is pretty freaking amazing seeing as she did my PT when I was 6 weeks post-partum and still a little tender in the nether regions so to speak. Are you jealous?
So anyway, I had hoped that seeing the doctor on Tuesday would be our only brush with the world of medicine for the rest of that week but I was sadly, bizarrely, wrong.
As soon as we hit spring it's BBQ season at Family Dinner Night and so on Wednesday of that week we had the usual snags, steaks and chops. For a little something different, Mum had grabbed some chicken skewers from the butcher. You know, chicken kebabs, and not the kind you consume at 4 in the morning after a hard night of drinking!
 |
| Sadly our kebabs didn't look as good as these. These ones look so good I could even be tempted to eat a kebab again the next decade. Seriously, you can check out the recipe for these bad boys here {not sponsored in any way} |
After dinner was done I was still feeling a bit peckish so I snacked on another chicken kebab while chatting and helping clean up. I was chewing the last bite and as I swallowed it I felt something sharp at the bottom of my throat. I finished swallowing and figured it was just an especially crispy bit of chicken. But on the next swallow I discovered I was wrong. Very wrong.
Have you seen The Lion King? You know the scene when Simba runs away from the hyenas after his Dad has died and Simba jumps down in to the thorns and one of the hyenas lands in them as well and comes up with thorns in his arse? And then one of the other hyenas laughs at him so he pulls the thorns out and spits them at the other one? If I had to give you a visual description of what it felt like, that would be it. That is what it felt like.
 |
| Yep. What that hyena is feeling. In my throat! |
After I looked at the kebab stick and saw that some of the stick was splintered I started coughing up a storm, trying to dislodge it. I couldn't cough it up, and I couldn't swallow without being in great pain, so Mum tells me to eat some bread. The idea being, like with a fishbone, swallowing some dry bread might catch it on the way down and dislodge it. After trying to swallow almost half a roll it became clear that that strategy wasn't going to work and it was time for a trip to the GP.
So off I trundled, unable to swallow, barely able to talk, with my Step-Dad, my sister A, and Zee. The after hours GP couldn't see anything however and said I would have to go to the emergency room. So we headed up to Campbelltown emergency department and braced ourselves for the bogan. Thank God I had decided to wear my jeans to Mum's instead of my trackies, lest I be mistaken for one of the house-o's milling around.
At this point I would like to point out that I grew up in C'town and am therefore allowed to disparage the place. Because I know what it's really like and that just like anywhere it has it's crazy bogans and house-o's, but also an equally proportionate amount of the nicest people you will ever meet. But that don't make good blog post fodder now does it?!
 |
| This is what I wished I could be doing by the end of last week. Oh how nice to curl up asleep in someone's arms |
We waited forever in the waiting room to be triaged, after which they decided to do an x-ray on my neck to see if they could see anything. They couldn't which was what I expected. After going over the x-ray the doctor said there was not much they could do as they couldn't see it just by looking and nothing showed on the x-ray. I would need to follow up with my GP the next day and get a referral to an ENT surgeon for further treatment if it didn't get better. I swear this doctor thought he was some kind of comedian, the jokes he was making. He didn't make me laugh but he did succeed in making me feel a right dickhead. Yes doctor, I'll be sure to only eat the chicken next time.
He did say though that often with that kind of problem, the tissue of the throat gets so inflamed that it naturally pushes out the foreign object and with a bit of luck that might work for me and I wouldn't have to worry about seeing an ENT. In the meantime, I just had to continue to try and deny my swallow reflex to avoid more pain. And that is not as easy as it sounds! The more you try not to swallow the more you need to. {Insert whatever 'swallowing' jokes you can think of here. Don't deny your mind hasn't strayed at least to the edges of that filthy gutter!}.
The rest of the night was not pleasant, to say the least! {Oh my mind is well and truly in that gutter now. Excuse me while I give myself a mental bitch slap}.
Thankfully the next morning, when I ate my toast, my throat had indeed inflamed enough that on one swallow of my toast the splinters came lose and it was sweet relief to my poor throat. I felt like such an idiot.
And after that good news we ended up getting good news after seeing the doctor for Zee and then getting an ultrasound. The doctor and I were right, it was just hormonal lumpiness, but as the doc said, if we hadn't checked it out my mind would have become a mess of worst-case-scenario situations. At least now I could take a breath and relax.
Or so I thought.
 |
| Lemonade Icy Pole. Exactly what the doctor ordered! |
Then came last week. While we were sitting at the emergency department the previous week I committed the ultimate act of parent jinxification (totally a word!). I thought to myself how lucky Dave and I were that so far we had avoided the family gastro bug. So of course, come Tuesday night the following week, Punky proceeded to vomit up the entire contents of her stomach all over Dave's leg and the carpet. Thank God I was in our room putting Zee to bed is all I can say! We then completed yet another parenting right of passage at about 2:30 the next morning, that of the early morning spew clean-up and sheet swap.
And thus ushered in our worst parenting week to date. The week I have dubbed Vom Week. Much like Shark Week only with less teeth and way more interactive and smelly. Honestly, I'd been starting to worry lately that poor Zee was never going to get to play with any of her toys once she learns how to actually hold them, as Punky doesn't seem to want to share, but I was wrong. She had no problem sharing her gastro bug with me. She gave that bitch to me in all it's vomiting-inducing glory!
 |
| Even when she's sick she still manages to look stunning. Notice the lovely shade of white that her Blankey Bear is. First time she's let us clean him properly in forever. I guess even Punky has her limits of what is acceptable mess! |
All I can say for last week is this. Thank God Dave was able to get his last two shifts of the week off to look after us and waited until I was mostly starting to recover before getting sick himself! And also, if that is our worst parenting week to date then we are truly blessed and doing damn well for ourselves so far!
So as you can see, we are pretty ready to pick up sticks and head up the coast for a few well-earned days at the beach. I say well-earned and not relaxing because as anyone who has holidayed with kids knows, it's not exactly the kind of relaxing you were used to on holidays pre-kids! While we are away next week I hope to spend as little time connected to the internet and as much time connected to my family as possible so there won't be an IBOT post. There probably won't be any posts.
Which is why I am going to be bringing you the first of my Lazy Girl's Guide to Christmas Shopping posts this Friday, which also includes a totally excellent giveaway, if I do say so myself. Make sure you check it out because a) you won't want to miss your chance to win. And b) you will of course all want to drink your fill of the blogging greatness that is moi, before I sign off for the week ;)
Now, please chat amongst yourselves and discuss the craziest/weirdest/most random reason you've ended up at the doctors or emergency room. I promise I will only laugh at you a little, and only to make myself feel better about the doctor laughing at me. Bastard!
And how many hits do you think this post is gonna get from weirdo randoms googling swallow and throat?
Linking up this fine Tuesday with the ever fine Essentially Jess for IBOT.
Comments
Leanne @ Deep Fried Fruit
That is a pretty epic fortnight. I'm pretty sure gastro makes everything worse
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