Panic surges, or is it adrenaline, the knowledge that action must be taken immediately- or the potential of extinction is a reality. Choking, stuck, a log in your pipes a log in your eye, remove it and you’ll see clearly – bible verses, hanging with the fundies in 1988. Tasting the sweet juice of belief and salvation, putting them on a sandwich of words from the good book. Believing those sweet raspberry jam words, trying to remove the log in my eye – why didn’t I notice it before? Before I was illumined. If only this thing stuck in my throat was so easy to remove.

Starting to get really grey now, rushing trying to find someone to perform the Heimlich manouvre. Just get this satellite of space junk out of the inner space of my wind pipe. Could I try Karate chops on my Adam’s apple, anything? This utter failure of the conveyor belt to my stomach now has me super flustered I’m a  blowfly trying to fly through a window, my head just keeps hitting it. I can see the world outside, but there’s this barrier, and things are getting heavier and heavier, lead weights hanging from my eyelids.

Last resort I stick my fingers down my throat, they’re large and sandpapery. They make me gag . That reaching feeling where my insides are being turned out like a pair of kitchen gloves that are a little too tight, they come off with insides showing. Bark, snap, barf….the release of stuff clears my glotis and a mess of vegetables and pieces of food in varying states of decay fly toward the kitchen floor, but  I can breathe now! Hallelujah I can breathe – feels good, deep breaths, deep sobbing breaths and gasps as tension ratchets down, anxiety now off red and the dial on yellow and falling….