close call
Terry, our Health and Body Care Merchandiser, offered me this sample jar of 180 vegetarian tablets of PCC-branded multivitamins a few weeks ago. And these tablets are huge -- bigger than any other pill I've ever swallowed. Still, I've generally had no real problem swallowing them before. I did this morning, though. It was scary enough that I was shaking for several minutes after I finally got the pill all the way down.
It was a very unusual experience. "Choking" is almost not the right word for it. Unless maybe it's exactly the right word? The thing is, it didn't feel like it was stuck in my wind pipe. It simply got stuck, about halfway down my throat. For a few seconds, I could still breathe just fine, but I could also still feel that stupid pill, not having gone all the way down. But then there was a second there where breathing started to become difficult.
And I had this flash in my mind: what could anyone do about this if I started telling someone I was choking? Does the Heimlich maneuver still work if something is stuck in the right pipe? I suppose if it got desperate enough then we'd all have found out.
I kept drinking the water I had on hand, and slowly but surely, the tablet continued, taking its sweet down, further down my throat, until it was completely swallowed. Then I coughed a bit, for several minutes. But I got it down and didn't have to cause some big scene. It does make me a little wary of continuing to swallow those gargantuan pills, though. For a split second, it scared the shit out of me.
What can I say about last night? Not a huge amount. I stood up to leave work at 4:20 and Scott made a crack about that not being a good sign. I wasn't off to smoke weed, though. I was off to the 4:30 showing of the very good movie Lucky at the Uptown Theatre on Lower Queen Anne -- a quick bike ride from here. Biking home after the 90-minute movie ended, even after seeing a movie I was home for the evening by 6:30, which is always nice.
I made myself a Field Roast Veggie Burger for dinner while watching the first half of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver -- something I usually watch with Shobhit, but he'll be missing about four weeks of TV. I then paused to write the movie review, the third movie review I'd written in as many days. I have a movie tomorrow night and Friday night too, but am just going straight home tonight.
I said goodbye to Shobhit yesterday morning when I left for work, and he left for the airport mid-afternoon. He texted me at regular intervals on his way to boarding the plane. I'm fine at work at the moment, maybe because I am surrounded by people, but I was surprised to find last night that I missed Shobhit almost immediately. It's one thing to spend the evening apart due to his having a work shift, but this time he wasn't coming home. That's not happening again until Friday, November 10. As much difficult we had over the past month or so, doing far better over the past couple of weeks, I really thought I would feel more relief than sadness when he went on his trip. For last night, it was the other way around.
I had a terrible night's sleep last night, which I really don't think had anything to do with Shobhit. It was just a fluke, and it happens every so often now: I just can't sleep. Last night I remained wide awake for hours. I often zonk out as early as 9:30 or sometimes even earlier, but I stayed up reading in the living room until about 10:45, which was when Ivan usually gets home from work on the bus. I figured I'd at least say hi to him before bed, since he was out of town all weekend. But, he worked late last night for some reason, and so I went to bed.
But when he did get home maybe an hour later, I was still wide awake. So I still got up and grabbed my bathrobe and went out to chat with him for a few minutes. Honestly it was nice just to have someone to talk to. He teased me a little about missing Shobhit, and even got weirdly specific: "You can't sleep because he's not snoring next to you!" We keep the bedroom door open at least cat-width at all times, as Shanti and Guru would never stand for not being able to come and go as they please. This means that, apparently, Ivan can occasionally hear Shobhit's snoring all the way out in the living room.
I talked to Ivan for, I don't know, ten minutes maybe. He told me a little bit about his weekend in Portland. I went to bed again, and still didn't fall into a steady sleep until maybe a quarter after 2 a.m. This is really bizarre for me, as I am not in any way a night owl. And I then had to get out of bed at a quarter after 5 this morning. Needless to say, I did not get very much sleep last night. Getting out of bed was an unusual challenge, but once I was up and around, my day so far hasn't been too tiring. This afternoon may prove different.
