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esophagal anxiety
Wednesday, February 4 2004
I was driving back home from a housecall today and I had an uncomfortable feeling in my lower esophagus. It felt like it was squeezing too tightly, and it was so unpleasant it was making me tremble with anxiety. For a moment I thought I might have to pull over until the feeling passed, but then I decided to crack open a Yuengling and sip that. The cold beer successfully relaxed the esophagal muscles while the alcohol calmed my nerves. By the time I got home, I was feeling well enough to shovel out the driveway, which had accumulated a couple inches of snow yesterday evening.
Earlier I'd dropped Gretchen off at a Kingston car shop near the traffic circle to pick up her Honda. It had just been given a new timing belt and snow tires for the front wheels. From there, Gretchen set out for New York City. She'd been called upon to do some emergency truncating to a gigantic definitive guide to human dwarfism (I kid you not).
Not too far into the night, well before my usual bedtime, I started feeling that problem in my lower esophagus again. It caused me such anxiety that I had to go lie down in bed. But then I remembered I had to feed Mavis her nightly wet food. As I did this tiny chore (which I managed to carry out successfully), my body began to tremble uncontrollably, which was distressing enough to cause a positive feedback loop of anxiety, resulting in greater trembling, resulting in even greater anxiety. I've had such unpleasant experiences in the past while under the influence of stimulant drugs (datura, marijuana, nutmeg, and pseudoephedrine come immediately to mind), but all I'd had tonight was a little alcohol and my usual several cups of mildy-caffeinated Red Rose tea. Perhaps I was suffering from a weird food allergy or food poisoning. Or maybe I had an intestinal bug that produced no fever.
I wished Gretchen was around to comfort me through such unpleasantness. One of the reasons people get married is for someone to be around in sickness as well as in health, but it always seems like one of us gets sick when the other is not around.
To calm my nerves sufficiently to fall asleep, I sipped on a small glass of rum.
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