Glen Drank Poison

 Glen Drank Poison

     Part of this story I cannot complete since I was a toddler with limited recall, especially when this memory involved great trauma. Looking back over 75 years there are gaps and unexplained circumstances that make no sense but everything here is as it was told and how I lived with them these many years. Somehow I was home playing with just Stephen and Cheryl in the front room of our Annetta street pad. My Mom was out and we were under the supervision of my Dad who was in another room busy with adult stuff. I cannot explain why or how but it was suspected that I drank from a green bottle of ant poison thinking it was coca cola. From a very early age I loved Coca Cola and my Mom did not routinely fill the fridge with soda pop.  The greatly desired Coke was only available on special occasions and was sipped like a fine Cabernet for kids. So when my brother referred to this poison kept on the window sill in the kitchen as the forbidden nectar I supposedly drank a big gulp and became sick instantly with a belly-ache and lay-down nausea. The ingredient was arsenic but probably not enough to kill me yet no one seemed to know that at the time. When my Dad came into the room Stephen casually told him that "Glen drank poison" that threw the man supposedly in charge into hysteria. He scooped me up and drove straight to a clinic on Firestone boulevard. While I remember little about my life as a toddler this horror show is etched forever in my brain. I remember nurses holding me down and a doctor forcing a large black hose down my throat while I choked in terror. From what I was told they sent down some charcoal and then pumped my stomach as I tried to retch out the hose while struggling for breath. In my unformed brain the pump was the sixe of a garden hose. It was past my bedtime and I was very drowsy but was not allowed to go to sleep in case I would die if I went under. My Mom came home from a meeting later and was met by two unattended children who let her know Glen drank poison and Daddy took him away in the car. They seemed unconcerned but Mommy wasn't happy! Obviously I survived that trauma but had a problem swallowing my entire life. My brother had an obsession about chewing food a large number of times which I followd in his mastication. By the time I had tortured my espophagus with cigarettes, spicy food and alcohol for decades I had serious problems with dsyphagia that was not cured until April 29, 1992 when an ENT doctor finally diagnosed my problems and found my espophagus' diameter to be the size of a pencil. I was given the first of five endoscopic treatments where they found webs blocking the abnormally small passage and stretched the tisssue with a bougie that gave me freedom to eat without the constant worry of suffocation I lived with for twenty years. It was also the  exact day that the Rodney King trial verdict started the LA riots so it was a bad day for everybody. In my struggles to deal with anxiety in 2015 I took EMDR treatments that helped with the trauma of the stomach pumping in my childhood. Unfortunately, swallowing problems and essophagus strictures seem to be a hereditary flaw. My Mother's little brother was born with a defect that kept him from swallowing food properly and he died in infancy. Endoscopy can be very unpleasant IF the doctor does not sedate you properly which happened to me twice as I became alert with a foot-long steel instrument down my throat. In the five I have had most are routine and recovery is just a couple of days. The procedure is miraculous for someone who struggled to swallow and took forty-five minutes to eat a sandwich.