Don't drink & eat

  Or you will be a sad panda like me who had to sit in the ER on Sunday afternoon because there was a piece of food caught in my throat:(   Ok, so maybe it had nothing to do with drinking and eating at the same time....   I was out with Matt at Cooper's Hawk (ever been? totally delicious!) and had just taken my last bite of chicken when I thought it had maybe gone down the wrong way. I could still breathe just fine, it was just kind of a weird feeling. You know, sometimes that happens with pop and stuff...no big deal, right??   Wrong.  All say Saturday I couldn't really eat or drink so I just knew something wasn't right. Sunday afternoon I went to the ER and had to be given a drug that relaxes your throat muscles so the food would move past where it was stuck. Luckily, this wasn't painful at all and worked like a charm!
So why did this happen to me? I promise I know how to chew my food, I've been doing it for 22 years just fine;) Turns out, if you have seasonal allergies, this is pretty common. Your throat can swell up, not enough to cause issues breathing, but enough to trap things that are on their way down to your stomach. There's not much you can do about it except take care with small bites.
Lesson leaned. 
I'll now be eating like a baby bird with food chewed 100 times. Each side.      1,2,3,4........