Bizarre Bezoar

 Bizarre Bezoar

Let me first explain what a bezoar is. A bezoar is a mass of food of other accumulated substances that form a dam in the gastrointestinal tract. The blockage can be a large chunk of partially chewed meat or accumulated non-edible, indigestible substances. While I was working in the Emergency Depsrtment at Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant, I saw several people who came in with a partially chewed piece of steak or ham that lodged in their esophagus that had to have an emergency endoscopy to remove the foreign body. Sometimes the food was too large or it stuck where there was a narrowing of the esophagus.
When I was a kid, long before I knew or understood what a bezoar was, I was on my parent’s side porch watching the road crew patching pot holes and smoothing the berm. I had just finished drinking a glass of Kool-Aid and was popping the ice cube into my mouth then back into the glass. It was too cold to keep in my mouth and I liked to hear the ice rattle in the glass when it popped out of my mouth. Absent-mindedly I kept my mouth moist and was playing with the ice cube until it slid back and brown my throat where it stuck. The ice quickly became painful, not coming back up nor going on down. I hurried into the kitchen and turned the water tap until hot water poured from the faucet then I gingerly sipped the water until the ice cube melted into my stomach. I was certainly scared until it disappeared.
Last night I was eating homemade stir-fry of vegetables, rice, and pieces of canned venison when the same thing happened. The food started down on its journey to my stomach then for some unknown reason, it stopped. The dam was painful not wanting to go down farther or to come back up. Sips of water did nothing other than to make the pressure seem worse. I couldn’t speak, so I couldn’t call 911 and explain that I was having an emergency, so I sat quietly, making attempts to swallow the blockage. I knew it wasn’t safe to make an attempt to drive myself to the hospital, so I texted my kids and prayed, the bezoar slowly edged downward until it disappeared into my stomach. I must have strained at sometime during the incident, because I had a small nosebleed. All is well now, I will have to remember to chew my food more thoroughly and swallow it more slowly. I am blessed that nothing else happened.