Last time I was here, I had a little trouble with the final swallow. The first one was ok — watery barium liquid. The second one was ok — something more like milk. The third one was, too — barium pudding with a spoon — although it did take a little work. But I couldn’t get down the last mouthful of pudding mixed with crushed saltines. The x-ray video of me-the-skeleton showed the problem. There I was, my skeleton jaw moving up and down and my skeleton tongue (?) and skeleton throat trying and trying to swallow. But there it was, that lump of pudding-and-cracker stuck at the base of my tongue in the back of my throat going nowhere.
That’s what happens when the shoot radiation at your throat day after day, week after week, after cutting out a chunk of your tongue.
But this time, three months after their gun fired its last shot at me, things were different. The first liquidy swallow went fine. So did the second milky swallow. And the spoonful of pudding. And finally the pudding-y crackers. As I chewed and swallowed, I could see the x-ray video in a reflection in the window, and I could see the dark lumps slip cleanly down my throat each time.
The technician was almost giddy.
“You did great!” she said. And she called me over to her monitor to show me the video close up.
“A lot of people still can’t do that,” she said. “Look at you. Right there. It goes right down. Let’s watch it again. You’re doing great!”
As an additional bonus: I actually tasted the saltines!