The Lump in My Throat

I have been writing pretty irregularly this week because I’ve been going to a lot of doctor’s appointments. One of my concerns happens to be a lump in my throat. Every time I swallow I can feel it. I told the doctor a little bit about when I started to notice it.

Around the time I broke up with the guy who almost killed me, I began having trouble breathing. It would only happen when I was driving alone in my car and when there was nothing in the car for me to drink. At first my throat would become dry and I’d begin to choke.Then I wouldn’t be able to breath. I’d begin to panic, and inevitably my breathing would come back, except for one time, where no matter what I did I could not breath. I became terrified and gasped for air as I choked on nothing.

A friend pointed out that it was interesting that I was having panic attacks in which I was unable to breath because when my ex-boyfriend almost killed, it was through suffocation.

I ran into a friend yesterday, a cancer survivor. Talking about her illness and surviving stage three cancer, she spoke these poignant words, “You just never think it is going to happen to you.” This is how I felt about almost being murdered by my ex-boyfriend and ending up in a domestic violence situation in general. Like an unexpected diagnosis, no one ever thinks it will happen to them.

Although I no longer have trouble breathing, I still feel like there’s something in my throat every time I swallow. I do worry because of my family history and because I was bulimic for a long time. The doctor said not to worry because the feeling of a lump in your throat happens to be the number one symptom of anxiety.

I remember exactly when my anxiety began. It was 2005 and I was living in Tucson, Arizona; the first time I was ever on my own. I was 19 when I moved out there, but it wasn’t so easy. My grandmother begged me not to go and I felt really guilty for leaving, but I needed to. I spoke to her almost every day, but after a few months I began having panic attacks. If I took a nap I would wake up suddenly in a fearful state with my heart racing and beating out of my chest. This went on for several months.

Then one morning, I had a dream that my grandmother was dying, I held onto her as she slipped away and finally disappeared. I woke up sobbing and clutching my pillow. I called her crying. She wanted to know why but I wouldn’t tell her. It had feared she was going to die from the moment I left, she knew this too. She would always reassure me that she was healthy and was going to live a long time.

After a few months, the panic attacks subsided, and I moved into a new apartment. I did not immediately set it up so instead of sleeping in a bed, I spent a week sleeping on the couch. One morning the phone rang very early: my grandmother had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. She had been having trouble swallowing for almost a year prior.

I got that call at 8 in the morning. By 4 o’clock that afternoon, my piece of crap car was stuffed with everything I could fit into it, my groceries were given to a friend, and my furniture was up for grabs on the side walk. Without notice, I took off on one of the most spontaneous adventures of my life.

I drove for so many hours straight that halfway through New Mexico, I was so tired I began to hallucinate. I pulled into the parking garage of one of their airports, covered myself with a sheet, and slept in my passenger seat for approximately three hours. I woke up and was back on the road as the sun came up. My anxiety was at it’s height. The whole way I drove as if I was rushing a dying patient to the nearest hospital, a hospital that was three thousand miles away.

Somewhere in Colorado, my car began to act funny. When I pressed the gas it hesitated. It began to slow. The Rocky Mountains were just too much stress for my beat up Cavilair. I pulled off at the nearest exit as it began to break down. I dialed AAA and frantically begged the woman on the other end of the phone for directions to the nearest shop. She was completely useless. I yelled out the window at the teens passing by, asking them where the nearest Walmart was, the teens gave me a dirty look and kept walking. My car came to a hault. Oh shit. I turned the key a few times, but the car wouldn’t start. I sat defeated. Then I looked out the passenger side window. I had broken down right in front of an auto repair shop. I couldn’t believe it. Soon I learned I was in some little mountain town called Trinidad, Colorado. The shop was completely empty when I arrived. I walked in and met the owner who sipped brandy as we discussed my car problems. He was more than happy to begin work on my car immediately. I sat and talked to his wife and buddy who were also hanging out in the shop. It wasn’t the first time since I’d been out west, I’d witnessed a man who brought his “woman” with him every where he went.

A few hours passed and I was back on the road. As I drove through northern Colorado, I watched as the mountains began to flatten out and turn into Kansas. My father called me and pleaded with me to take a break and sleep at a motel instead of inside my car. I had been driving since 4 pm the previous day on only three hours of sleep, and it was now nearing 2 in the morning. I obliged him and pulled over at the nearest Motel 6 or 8 one of them, and again was only able to sleep for a few hours before jumping back into the car and forfeiting my complimentary continental breakfast.  Again, I began to have issues with the car. That was the day I learned how to put air in my tires. That morning, as I drove through Kansas, I watched the bright red sun rise over fields that stretched on for so long they began to look like the ocean.

I was making record time until a cop pulled me over somewhere in the middle of Kansas for speeding….well at least he didn’t see the case of beer in my back seat…it could’ve been much worse. I begged him to give me a warning rather than a ticket, but he was pretty merciless; even when I told him about my grandmother and why I was speeding. Perhaps my Connecticut plate didn’t lend much assistance, regardless; America’s heartland was lacking in compassion that day.

As soon as he was out of sight, I began speeding again. It took ten hours alone to drive through Kansas, and I continued on into the night passing through a few major cities in Ohio. I began to nod off when I reached Pennsylvania. Now so late (or early, depending how you look at it) in the morning, it was just me and the tractor trailers. Finally when I got to New York around 7 in the morning, I took an hour long nap at a rest stop before continuing on. I was relieved when I finally saw the sign for Danbury, CT, though I was still about a half hour from my grandmother’s house.

I successfully completed my epic journey – and dropped out of college in the meantime, forever being able to amusingly label myself as an art school drop out. During that time my grandmother became increasingly ill, not necessarily from the cancer; it was the chemo treatments that did her in. One afternoon she had a stroke. She spent the next month in the hospital and on my birthday that year, we brought her home to die. Her birthday was a couple weeks after mine. Knowing she wouldn’t make it, I asked her to blow out the candles on my cake.

After she died I felt an extreme amount of guilt, perhaps it was my fault; perhaps I killed my grandmother. In the ancient Indian medical model, the Ayurveda, it is believed that the physical body and the emotional spirit are one and must be treated that way in the case of ailments of the physical or mental kind. The the spiritual make-up of Ayurveda includes the chakra system. The chakras are seven energy centers within one’s body. All seven charkas must be in harmony to preserve a person’s physical well being because within them flows a life force essential to the one’s mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual balance.

When I left for Arizona, my grandmother pleaded with me to stay, but as much as I loved her, I could not spend another year of my life in my hometown. When I told her that I was moving to Arizona, she made sure it was clear that I broke her heart. I think it might’ve been true and that it was broken, irreplaceable, and definitely unable to ever be resembled. She cried for days, mourning my departure.

Each of the seven charkas account not only for a specific emotional part of your soul but also for a specific physical region of your body. The heart chakra is located in the region above the abdomen and below the neck. Spiritually this chakra holds all the emotions that deal with love and one’s heart. With the physical and spiritual bodies connected, emotional imbalances in the charkas can cause physical ailments. My grandmother died because she developed an esophageal tumor in the center of her chest: right at the location of the heart chakra.

So today, I will go to a lab about two  blocks from my grandmother’s old house to a radiologist’s office where I will do a barium swallow test. I’m sure now you can understand why I have a lump in my throat.

Don’t forget to stop by The Veggie Stand and check out my new Recipe Wednesday post,“Jam Making for Beginners.” There’s nothing tastier than homemade raspberry jam….. yum!

NOTE:I just got back from the radiologist and good news- the doctor says everything looks perfect! To me this is a miracle after the years of abuse and eating disorder….