Have a bone to pick?

 

Sunday, 03-05-09 -  Are we all having a fish-bone-stuck-in-the-throat galore?

I had one to pick this morning. Rather, wife had the bone. It was somewhere to the left side of the entrance to her throat where the tonsils are. She figured it was somewhere further down but it wasn't. The nerves gave the impression that it was. I flashed a torch light in her mouth and told her to say "Aaah". She tried, but the sound came out gurgled. The tongue kept getting in the way, but I caught a glimpse of the 1.5 mm part of the needle-like bone buried in the flesh. Couldn't tell how deep it went but I said maybe I could use a pair of tweezers to remove it. But I still doubted that's the culprit. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's really further down.

She wanted to try the traditional stuff first, like swallowing lumps of rice. Nothing happened. She swallowed half a dozen bananas. It didn't budge. She poured some water into a cup, took it outside under the sky, stirred it round, wrote the Chinese word for 'well' in it and drank the water in one gulp. It's supposed to sink into the well. Nichts.

That was yesterday, I mean, last night. Heard there's a guy at a local sundry shop who charges RM15 for that mumbo-jumbo stuff. They say it works. I never tried it. Can't write in Chinese unless I practice it but I never bothered.

A few hours after breakfast today, she was still struggling with it. Finally, she said, 'Can't take it anymore. Let's try the tweezers'. She was scared she could throw up if I tickled her throat. We can't do it standing up then. So she tried lying down on the bed. I got a spoon with a long handle. I washed the tweezers thoroughly and wiped them clean and dry. Can't afford to let them slip out of my hands while performing the 'operation'.

I asked her to hold the torchlight. I pressed her tongue down with the spoon and with the tweezers in my right hand, picked out the pesky thing in one go. Phew! That thing was about 6 mm long.  Years of picking beard stubs from my chin gave me all that practice for this one moment of glory.

Her neighborhood friend asked her about the fishbone later. She told her, hubby got it out. 'Waaah!, she exclaimed. 'That would cost RM25 at Dr. Khoo's'. Heck, I didn't know. People rush off to the doctor's for a little thing like that? I imagined putting a sign outside my window: "Have a bone to pick? RM10 only".  That should give them doctors a run for their money.  But then, that would make me a quack.  Oh well, just blame it on the economy...