[Jeb writes… ] I had just sat down with the family and Dad to a spaghetti dinner. [We lived at Livsey for a month between moves. Kathy was 7 months pregnant.] Mom was in Tampa with her friends. About my fifth bite, I felt a piece of French bread get caught in my throat. I immediately realized that it was stuck, so I went to the upstairs bedroom to try to cough it up or swallow it down.

My eyes started tearing up. I felt on the verge of throwing up or choking. Terrible feeling. My stomach tried throwing up, and my throat tried swallowing, but nothing was coming up and nothing was going down. My esophagus was sealed tight.

The problem with this condition is that you fill up with saliva that starts spilling into your wind pipe. Even though I knew what was happening, my body was panicking. It didn’t know whether I was going to gag or vomit, and neither reaction seemed to help.

It was like torture. I didn’t know what to do. Kathy called Dr. Eidex who said we should go to the emergency room.

Since I couldn’t swallow because it contributed to my overflowing esophagus, causing me to gag and go into spasms, I spit.

How am I going to go to the hospital? I have to keep spitting, I told Kathy. Kathy got me a green mop bucket [and drove.] So I carried the green bucket on my lap to the emergency room and Dekalb General. Spitting as indiscreetly as I could the entire way, desperatly avoiding swallowing.

At the emergency room, Kathy signed me in. She had to stay in the guest waiting room while I stayed in the emergency room waiting room. We waited and waited.

I would get worse at times if I accidentally swallowed. I mostly paced, carrying around my green bucket to spit in. If I got real bad, I would go down the hall to the restroom to try to cough up my own saliva that was trying to drown me. I waited for about an hour and a half. There were some car accident victims, a few old people who weren’t feeling well, a guy with a swollen thigh, an old man who bumped his head in his attic, a couple of little kids who seemed fine, and a lady who had a 20 foot fall out of a window.

We all waited together waiting for our turn. When my turn came, they took me down the hall to another waiting area. I waited there for about an hour. Kathy would come visit every now and then, and I would go visit her. I couldn’t talk very well, and my throat was getting sore from trying to clear my wind pipe.

Finally, about 11 pm, I was brought into an actual examination room. Here I waited another 30 minutes.

I learned something. When the lady asked me in the beginning if I was having any trouble breathing, I should have said yes. Bet that would have cut my wait in half.

I felt like I had been tortured for about four hours by a malicious piece of french bread. People had been looking at me all night with my bucket. It was easy to figure out what was wrong when a guy has a bandage on his head, or a swollen thigh. I don’t think anyone could figure out why I was pacing around, grimmacing with a green bucket.

Everyone wanted to look in my bucket, but only those with official capacity got to. The check-in nurse asked me if I was spitting blood. No, I said horsely. Let me see, she said, and tilted the bucket to see. She was impressed with the amount of spit.

Kathy had been distraught all night. In the examination room, I told Kathy that everyone was referring to me as “the bucket man.” She cracked up.

A tall, young doctor came in to examine me in the waiting room. He saw my bucket, and also wanted to know if I had been spitting blood. No, I said. He wanted to see. Don’t know why people wouldn’t believe me. He was impressed with the amount of spit. He would tell another doctor later that I had at least a liter of spit in my bucket. That was after emptying it twice.

I don’t know why anyone couldn’t translate all this into the length of my wait and apologize.

The tall, young doctor couldn’t figure out what to do. So he called in an ear, nose, and throat specialist. The specialist told the tall, young doctor to get me prepped for surgery. Great.

So I was sent back to the second waiting area to wait some more. I sat down, and felt the blockage move down some. This made me feel better because it relieved some pressure.

X-rays were taken by a comical team of photographers. The southern technician kept calling my bucket my spit-toon. The northern technician asked me if I had been eating Italian. Italian will get you every time. He was Italian, he told me.

Kathy and I were sent to yet another waiting area. I felt the blockage move down a little more. In fact, I thought it might have gone all the way down. In a second examination room, the anethesiologist came in to interview me. I told her I thought I might be better. She said she would hold off on the interview and blood work until Dr. Hoddeson came. She thought my problem might be a Zinker something or other.

Dr. Hoddeson arrived. He was a short, young doctor. I told him I thought I might be better. He had me try to drink some water. I wasn’t better. The water filled me back up and the spasms started all over again.

Worst feeling in the world, Dr. Hoddeson told Kathy. No kidding. Glad someone had shown up who could appreciate what was going on. I picked up my bucket again. Dr. Hoddeson went to get ready, leaving me and Kathy in the examination room. I had several strong “dry heaves” that expelled some of the water. I felt much better after that.

Three nurses dressed in scrubs showed up about midnight looking for someone to take to surgery. They were surprised that I was standing, looking fine, wearing a sport shirt and shorts.

You haven’t been prepped, said the head nurse, Beth. They had me take my clothes off and put on one of those embarassing gowns. Kathy helped tie it off so that her husband wouldn’t be exposed to the masses.

Nurse Beth told me I would have to get on the gurney. I told her I didn’t mind walking. She wasn’t sure what to do. People don’t walk to surgery, apparently. So she gave me some scrub pants to wear and little booties. The three nurses, Kathy, and I started our walk to surgery. They were tickled by this. I was glad to oblige.

Kathy was not allowed in surgery, so she had to go to yet another waiting room with my bucket.

I met the team in the hallway. The anetheseolgist (the Zinker lady) was not pleased that I had walked to surgery, but got into the spirit of things soon enough as she explained some of the delightful drugs she could give me. I believe she was speaking from experience.

An oriental nurse plugged me up to a tube that would be used to give me my delightful drugs. We all walked into the operating room where they put me on a narrow table padded with warm sheets. They attached all kinds of wires and probes to me, and then covered me with warm sheets.

Dr. Zinker began telling me about what I would feel as I was going out. The oriental nurse began the dose. An oxygen mask was put over my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the short, young Dr. Hoddeson preparing his toys. Out of my view, I was sure he was greasing up the long metal probe he would be shoving down my throat.

The happy drugs were kicking in.

Hey! Wear’s the music? I asked through the oxygen mask, remembering that the doctors on St. Elsewhere always operated to their favorite music. Dr. Hoddeson said, we do have a radio. I never heard any music go on.

Nurse Beth was holding my hand. I felt myself slipping away. Goodbye, I said. We don’t like to say goodbye in here, Nurse Beth said. How about goodnight.

Goodnight I said, then closed my eyes. The last thing I remember was opening my eyes and saying, by the way, I snore in my sleep.

A minute later (actually an hour and a half) I began to wake up. I vaguely rembered some of what Kathy told me happened in the recovery room.

Seems like the first thing I saw was Dr. Hoddeson holding a jar in front of my eyes with a meatball. It was a meatball, he told me. I had been wrong about the french bread.

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[Kathy writes…] Everyone we met after the emergency episode was very nice and accommodating towards us. I felt very comfortable with the care Jeb was getting, even though at times I thought that I probably should have been more worried than I was. I guess I felt relieved that his last bout of throwing-up/spitting was over and that someone was finally going to take care of him.

I tried to go to sleep in some tiny purple chairs that I sat in while waiting for Jeb, but my pregnant belly wouldn’t allow me any comfort. Most of the time I paced the floor, which was a good thing, otherwise the doctor wouldn’t have found me to show me the meatball.

Around 1:30 the nurse came to get me to tell me Jeb was waking up, but she warned me that he was a little “drunk”. When I got to the recovery room, the doctor was talking to him.

It was very strange, and rather uncomfortable to see him in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over his face. Actually, the oxygen mask turned out to be a vaporizer. Jeb called me over and asked me to lean over. He said, “Kathy, if anything happens to me, I want you to take care of my godson, Eric. That’s very important”. Over the next 30 minutes, he tried speaking with an Italian accent and telling me such things as “the first thing they told him when he woke up was that he was Italian” and he also told me to find out if any of his attendants had Macintoshes. I was also to get names and write letters of commendation for all of them.

He was nutty and sometimes funny, except for when he would say things like “I see the light”, reaching towards it, while they took x-rays.

[Update: Several years later, after three trips to doctors, I was diagnosed with a shotsky ring, which is at the top of the stomach. Once I realized food was getting caught at the bottom of my throat and not the top, I have been able to manage it with no case as bad as the original. 5/2010.]