When Swallowing Becomes a Battle

Pulse Check:

As a student in PA school, or anyone studying medicine for that matter, it’s normal to learn about aspects of medicine that may seem incomprehensible, gruesome, or “nasty” to other individuals outside of medicine. But for us in healthcare, it just becomes second nature to us. And while also being in our didactic year of school, it also means the amount of information we’re taught is like “drinking water from a firehose”.

With that said, we covered something this week that honestly shook me up a bit. 

There's a part of the brainstem called the nucleus ambiguous. It's part of the vagus nerve and helps trigger the swallow reflex. Basically, when food or water hits the back of your throat, this signal kicks in to help move it down through the esophagus and to your stomach. You don’t even have to think about it, it just works automatically — thanks to our lady Mother Nature.

But what really stuck with me is when someone who has a stroke or traumatic brain injury that damages this area, that automatic reflex can go haywire or away all together. 

My professor showed us a video of a patient doing a modified barium swallow test (which is a medical imaging procedure that uses X-rays to examine the upper gastrointestinal tract). 

Just trying to get a single sip of water down was an uphill battle for this patient. 

Here’s a video that’s similar to the one we were showed:

You could see the amount of effort, fear, and frustration they had and honestly, it made me feel a deep kind of empathy that I wasn’t expecting. 

The amount of anxiety I got just by watching this patient try to swallow a single swig of water was immense. It made me take a step back and realize something…

We tend to take basic things like swallowing for granted every single day. 

Especially with the “hustle and bustle” of today’s world, it becomes easy to rush through our day and realize little things like this.

Seeing that kind of struggle up close really stuck with me and I hope this essay makes you take life with a little more gratitude because it definitely did for me.

Be well and Keep Pluggin’.

-C.

✍🏻 Weekly Wisdom Quote:

This week: on taking things for granted.

"Enjoy the little things in life, because one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things."

— Kurt Vonnegut

Analysis:

It’s important to take a step back every once in a while and appreciate our everyday functions.

Swallowing, walking, bending over, raising a glass, getting out of bed…

These things are second nature to us until they are not. We take them for granted until they’re compromised.

-C.