WebMD: A Cautionary Tale

I finally turned in my master’s piece (not to be confused with a masterpiece), so now I can blog freely without anything hanging over my head. At least until tonight, when my first class starts. I was comparing my class schedule with my roommate’s and it appears that I may have gotten screwed. She has about 6 hours of class per week. I have one class that alone will be occupying 10 hour of my week (three hours Thursday night (why would they schedule a class during The Office?) and seven hours on Fridays (so no more 3 p.m. buses back to D.C. to see the fam))

But on to more important topics, like valium.

My mystifying health problem started a few months ago. I was having dinner at a Mexican restaurant when something strange happened. I chewed a bite of chicken enchilada and swallowed, except that the food didn’t go anywhere. It just sort of sat in my throat impeding my breathing. It lasted for an eternity (or about 5 seconds) and then finally went down Esophagus Road and into my belly where it belonged. But I was totally freaked out for a few minutes, and then promptly forgot about it. A couple weeks ago though it happened again. I swallowed, except I didn’t, and my body went into I’m Choking! mode. It’s a horrible sensation. When the food is in my throat, it’s as if I’m trying to swallow but I can’t remember how.

After that, it just kept happening. At least I think it kept happening, but it’s possible that I had just scared myself. My mother was convinced it was an allergy, but a quick visit to WebMD had convinced me otherwise. After my little site search, I knew that my problem was one of three things: throat tumors, early signs of MS or esophageal cancer. My hypochondria was only exacerbated by a discussion with a friend. When I told her my symptoms, she said, “oh my mom has that. She has Parkinson’s.” I hadn’t even considered this possibility yet. Add it to the list.

I made an appointment to see a doctor, knowing that she would laugh hysterically at all of my ridiculous WebMD-fueled assumptions. As it turned out, she was more of an alarmist than I was. She told me that I needed to see an ear, nose and throat doctor immediately. “Don’t wait a week. Go today if you can.”

“This is it,” I thought to myself. “I’m really dying.”

So I made an appointment for the next morning with an ENT, Dr. Gopesh Sharma. Nice guy. He has a daughter my age and wanted to know what we (25-year-old girls, I guess) do at night when we don’t tell our parents where we’re going.

“I’m old enough now that I actually tell my parents my weekend plans,” I told him.

“”I guess if she told me, I’d probably follow her.” Okay. Weird. Let’s talk about my throat, shall we?

So he pulled the tip of my tongue down to my chin (ouch!) and began examining. In the end, he was convinced that the problem was that the muscles around my esophagus were spasming. Those muscles are supposed to relax when food comes their way so that an involuntary swallow occurs. Instead, they were tensing up, and even though I was trying to swallow the food down, it wasn’t really up to me at that point. It was supposed to happen automatically.

The doctor thought it was related to stress. Hmmmm. I guess it’s possible between a semester of journalism hell in New York, the Denver airport and my mater’s project. So he put me on valium. It sounds so 70s, right? Like Quaaludes or something. In fact, I talked to my college roommate about the whole ordeal (she’s a speech pathologist and knows all about these types of ailments) and she said that putting me on valium “sounded a little old school.”

I was thinking about going to see another doctor up here, but after a few doses of valium, I actually think I’m fine. Well, almost fine. I actually had a horrible headache yesterday. I wonder if it’s a tumor…