Hard to Swallow

Last week trekked out to Greenlane to have a barium swallow done to find out what is causing me to gag on some foods, unfortunately some I really enjoy, like apple, potatoes, bread rolls to name a few.  

I got the hospital bus out there and enjoyed the ride through leafy Epsom suburbs with their imposing villas and bungalows.  I forget there  are other suburbs out there.

People waiting for their X-rays looked quite incapacitated and I can be thankful that I don't have broken bones,  touch wood.  When I got to the room where they were doing the X-ray there were these huge machines and  four women - a radiologist, a radiographer, the speech language therapist and a student who was busy spreading what I thought was cream cheese on a piece of whole meal bread. Yum,  I thought, I like cream cheese.  

They positioned me on the machine and showed me where to hang on and then gave me a chalky strawberry-flavoured barium drink to sip. I did what I was told and took some cautious sips.  So far so good.  Then someone said  to me " Do you always gulp your drink of water like this?" 

"Well ", I said, " I did what I was told. A sip is a sip and a gulp is a gulp". So ended up telling myself to have a big gulp of barium drink which slipped down alright. 

Then it was on to the bread and biscuit, both with cream cheese topping.  Yuk, it was barium paste and my cautious mouthful made me gag of course.  The biscuit was better as I turned it upside down and fooled myself into taking a bigger bite.  It didn't slip down easily though and it looks as though solid food is not getting on its way to the stomach as fast as before.  They are going to come round with the CD and report and discuss it with me some time.

So that was that little procedure. 

Jawing off

My eating problems have further increased with a very sore jaw over the past 10 days or so.  First I thought I might have an abcess on the gum or toothache and rang the dentist who said  in which case antibiotics would be called for so i went to the doctor who prescribed them for me and examined my jaw but after taking the drugs for the weekend there was no improvement. 

Then went to the dentist for an X-ray and he now thinks it is TMJ disfunction.  This is the temporal mandibular joint and its painful muscle which I can apply heat to or massage gently.  It makes eating and opening my mouth for getting food in hard and painful.  Chewing is difficult.  

However have further modified my diet to have softer vegetables and smaller and thinner pieces of food.  Thin sandwich bread instead of toast bread for breakfast, no hard crackers or crunchy apples, or hard cheese but instead have discovered some nice Woolworths Select Rosemary and Wheaten biscuits, juicy pears and kiwi fruit and cream cheese.  

The good news is that things seem to be improving over the days a little bit.

Looking forward to some broad beans in the near future.  Roll on Spring!