I stood in my kitchen last Wednesday and went from “fine” to “in distress” in a millisecond.
I held a glass of water in my hand. I drank some, then discovered that I was actually quite parched. So, I gulped more water. Drinking entails swallowing, followed by a procession down your esophagus and into your stomach.
Did I mention that I don’t have a healthy esophagus?
I forget that sometimes.
Last Wednesday, there was a miscommunication in my body.
The signals between my head and my esophagus were not deciphered in time. I received a warning fired back - YOU ARE DROWNING. All that water I had gulped didn’t go down, but was backlogged in my esophagus and before I realized this, I tried to take a breath.
It is impossible to convey how quickly things began to move…and how absolutely inert I felt at the same time. I began heaving, a short geyser of water shot out of my mouth and I gasped…or my brain told my lungs to gasp but nothing came out. There was a total breakdown in my body - messages firing and not landing, distress calls being sounded and nothing coming out.
I was drowning in my own kitchen while my sister sat 50 feet down the hall completely clueless.
For days after this incident, I feel anxiety rising when I think of it. The inability to breathe, the wherewithal to know that I was in distress but the confusion about how to communicate that, the desperation to get oxygen, the shallow, halting gasps I was eventually able to get. It was terrifying. It is terrifying.
And what do I do with it now, this traumatic memory attached to drinking? swallowing? breathing?
In the midst of a pandemic where everyone is fearful about the virus out there, I was reminded that I carry something within my body that could take me out…with a sip of water. It scares me and frees me, all at the same time.