Hello everyone,
My name is Ryan and I'm 18 years old (turning 19 next month). For years now I have been putting up with a very strange, yet extremely frustrating problem.
When I was about
8 or 9 years old I was on vacation with my entire family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc) in Long Beach Island, NJ. On one night we decided to barbeque some steak for dinner. I loved steak at the time and looked forward to it. However, everything would change after my first bite. The piece was too big and I didn't chew it enough, and began choking. I must tell you - it was the most scary experience of my life. I couldn't breathe or talk, and I thought I was going to die. My dad saved my life by performing the Heimlich maneuver on me. The 45 seconds or so it took to get everything up seemed like an hour.
Since then I have had this problem, which I presume is anxiety-related, that has continually gotten worse over the years, and plagued my social and nutritional lives. I am by far the slowest eater in my family and also the slowest eater out of all my friends - and I do mean "by far". Depending on the particular food we're eating, whether it's with family or friends, I usually take 20 to 40 minutes longer than everyone else, and usually just end up throwing the rest away or saving it for later, even if I'm still hungry. I almost never eat around friends or in public, and dread going out to dinner because of this embarrassing problem. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE food, but I just get so embarrassed by my extremely slow and odd eating habits, that I elect not to eat in many social situations.
These embarrassing eating habits come directly from my fear of choking. I can't seem to take a bite of food and not chew it for a good 5 or 6 minutes simply because I fear of choking on it. It's rediculous. Food also seems to get caught in my throat more often than I know it should. Mind you, it's not choking because I can still breathe - but I assure you food often gets caught in my throat, forcing me to either gag or try to throw up to get it out. I can't even take pills - I have to resort to liquid or disolvable tablet medications. I even tried taking a pill - about
a year or so ago, and got it stuck in my throat for 23 hours (I'm not exaggerating either) - and it was a freaking Advil, the smallest pill out there! I can't help but think it's all anxiety related.. and that my throat closes up because I get nervous.
This problem is reaking havok on my social and nutritional lives, as I am 5'5" and 125 lbs. I haven't seemed to gain so much as a pound in over a year now either. So please, if anyone has advice or similar stories with success, please share with me, I need to remove this very pesky and frustrating problem from my life.
Thanks in advance, and sorry for the short novel I have seemed to of written, lol.
