I Ate a Meatball and Almost Died

That title could be a post all by itself, but since I’m a blogger, you get the full story. I went back to work on Monday and made it basically through the day. There was the part where I had to go home and lie down for a long lunch hour, but that can happen even on my non-surgical recovery days. I blame Vicadin really. Now that the pain is more on the outside of my stomach and my abdominal muscles, as opposed to literally feeling the band tightening my stomach on the inside, Vicadin does me little good. Right now, I’m still sore from Sunday when I decided that I needed to actually take my recycling to the recycling center for the first time in months and months and months. That really wasn’t my brightest idea. Lots of bending down caused a searing pain to shoot through my right side. It’s calmed down and now only aches when I stand up and walk. It’s basically where I imagine my appendix might be, if my appendix went on a field trip to a random spot on my right side, between my ribs and belly button. Right there. That’s where it hurts.


In addition to overdoing it physically, I have to confess that I’ve been testing my gastric limitations. I was on a full liquid diet for two days after my surgery, then started sneaking in solids. Mostly there were in the form of scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese. (because soft is almost a liquid, right?), chili with no beans, and chopped tuna and chicken (because being pre-chewed is totally three steps closer to liquid than a solid in my mind). I kept drinking broth and throwing away the rest of the soup, which is fairly unsatisfying. Then on Sunday I demanded that Clicker take me to the sacred house of pancakes and let me eat one. He tried very hard and very valiantly to talk me out of it, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Pancakes are very soft! Sometimes they even fall apart when you try to pick them up with a fork. I ate two of them very slowly with some scrambled egg substitute. Then I wasn’t hungry for the remainder of the day.

I’m at work today and the office orders Potbelly sandwiches for lunch during our wholesaler meeting. I’m hungry. I ate/drank my soup around 10:30am and I don’t have any other food. Then I see a meatball sandwich on wheat bread and I think, “I can do this. The meat is ground together and the bread is wheat instead of white. It shouldn’t get stuck. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp”

Then immediately I knew that I had made a very large mistake.

Three bites into the sandwich, I get a searing pain in my chest and I have to rush out of the meeting. I started walking around the office, much like a pregnant lady with contractions. I sat down at my desk and a wave of nausea rolled over me. I got out my trash can and willed the food not to come up and upset my sore appendix site and delicate stomach. Then my breathing got a little harder and it felt like I couldn’t catch my breath, which caused me to try to breathe even harder in a panic. Fortunately, a I’ve been training for the past couple in the art of mastering anxiety attacks and I’m now a Jedi master – er- scratch that. I’m now at least able to appear normal in public. I walked around some more and felt a hard lump right at the edge of my diaphragm. I have to assume that it was part of the meatball because I don’t like to think about my tumors growing heads and talking back to me.

It took about two hours for me to feel somewhat normal again. I’m now firmly back on liquids until Friday because I’d rather drink my meals than have an aneurism and die at work from a renegade meat and some whole wheat bread. No sandwich is worth a trip to the ER. I just wish that Jello tasted better.