And the Burp Bone’s Connected to the Pee Bone

So, the barium swallow revealed these things:

1. I do not particularly like barium, even though it is on the periodic table (56, Be). It tastes like dirt.
2. The body can only take so much barium before it burps it back up.
3. Barium really makes you crave steak. That (plus the luxurious valet parking at Missouri Baptist) sent me to Bristol’s, where I ate a fillet all by myself. (Dirt and Turf. Burp and Turf? Barium and Carrion.)

Later, the doctor’s office called and said I looked fine except for a small hiatal hernia. I thought, why would a hiatal hernia make me urinate on myself? If anything it would give me acid reflux. I dismissed it.

But a quick search on “hiatal hernia choke urinate” brought me to a forum of lost souls all with the same symptoms. They’d be a) sleeping or b) in a very public place, when they would suddenly explode in a burst of phlegm, mucus, and vomit, and from the older women, urine. A lot of “It’s like something’s gone down the wrong pipe” and “It feels like I can’t breathe!!!!!!!” As plentiful as the exclamation points were the admissions they almost all had hiatal hernias.

So this is the Rube Goldberg explanation I have for myself: My stomach slides either above or below my diaphragm, my diaphragm reacts, my lungs expand, I breathe in what’s in my mouth, and then the rest of me reacts by pushing out all fluids and then eventually a woman sticks her finger up my vagina.