Chapter Three: Acha-What?

I could not let go of Manhattan. I set myself on applying to Masters and lifting up a banana trading company. A first entrepreneurial experience linking me back to the worse story of mercantilism of my home country. It was fitting. It was an extreme. I invested funds I should not have in sponsoring my own work Visa. I worked with a visionary, in exchange. A mentor who was led me through ups and ups. Eventually, I let go. The bridge of Manhattan I closed. And had no regret. The era had finished.

My business school applications flourished and were successful. I received offers and the focus paid off. I went back to Ecuador focused in deferring my degree by a year. It made no sense to study while the criss happened. It made sense to reconnect with the mother land I had left ten years prior vowing to come back to end its poverty, its under-development, its suffering. Somehow, priorities shifted. I became a banker in New York. And I wanted to rekindle the kindle. I wanted to reconnect with those principles of commitment. So I came back and focused in developing innovative entrepreneurial ventures. A social movement and creative arts incubator was born. Projects were capitalised in the third largest city of Ecuador. The environment was rich around me. Artists/professionals who knew nothing of my world surrounded me. I had a lot of value to add. Structure. Funding requests. It all flowed. A boutique interior design company flourished. I reconnected with a darling sister of the soul who was seeking structure. We both collided in the need for expression. For challenging the status-quo. In all, distant fields, so far removed from the past era. And projects mounted.

As I went back to Ecuador, family dinners I sorely missed started occurring. By now, since leaving Goldman, I had lost about 25 pounds. I loved it. And attributed that to the healthy diet of cereal and vanilla yogurt breakfasts coupled with white wine bottles for lunch/dinner I adhered to for a few months. I started thinking "not so much."

These dinners seemed scripted. I would take a bite. The food went in. I timed such bites strategically when the conversation was happening away from me. When someone asked inadvertently a question, I would look at them, waiting for the food to allow air to create voice, and then I would speak. My voice turned from Darth Vader, to Chipmunk, to hanging man on chord in every bite. People on the table just observed patiently. If I was in silence, I would extend my neck backwards, the old technique I inadvertently learned over the two years past, and then speak. I thought no one noticed. Eventually, I would just say, "excuse me" in my best Darth Vader style, and retreat quietly to the bathroom, vomit, and be back for more. I would not eat of course. Serve myself scatter food around my plate. And carry on. Happy to be there.

It takes a parent to speak up. A week of this and my mother said: "Are you choking." My answer: "No.. well... yes, I think.. not sure. When I eat the food does not go down but it is not a big deal." NOT A BIG DEAL? I think I heard her react. I downplayed it. Little by little people around the table started adopting tones. Overtime, these evolved. There was the compassionate "Oh, no, you are choking again?" There was the judgemental "Oh, here we go, you are choking again!" There was the concered, "he is choking again, we need to get this fixed." And there was the savvy predictor: "he is choking again! caught it first!"

I thought it was hilarious. A non-issue really. But, parents being parents, this eventually evolved. Aunts would see me at family meetings and Ecuador being public, they were informed. So, I hear you are choking. Soon afterwards, I had my grandfather pursuing me. Son of a doctor and doctor at heart. Him and my parents started a crusade on getting me checked. I somehow managed to go more than four months without a doctor's visit. Forty pounds down and counting! I loved it. I would just go to dinners and not eat. Drink instead. And it felt like the cleansing I had been looking for. My body looked sharp, thin, fit, but at a compromise. I did not have to let go of everything, I could still drink. At least anything that was non-carbonated. Oh, and I did.

One day, in spite of my rebellion, I finally make it to the endoscopy room of Metropolitano Hospital. I had been assigned to a doctor that was renowned across Ecuador for being the best gastroenterologist in town. I take the sleep again. My induced coma happens again. I liked it not a single bit. It felt like an intrusion to my body's natural operandi. But we go. On my mom's birthday. Early in the morning. What a mother she is. I take it in. Fall asleep. This time, my renowned surgeon specialist uncle is in the room with me, the doctor, and the nurse while the process is done. Whatever magic the anasteseologist performed did not work, I wake up in the middle of the procedure. Tubes in my mouth. I cough desperately. And the tubes remain. The nurse forcefully tells me to chill the hell out. Yeah, easy to say, "biatch", I thought. I blame the country. The inefficiencies. The lack of professionalism. My uncle and the doctor talk. Gladly my uncle is there. He cares.

I leave feeling as if someone blew cold air into every pore within my throat. Lovely. The flew that ensues was great. My mom's birthday dinner turns into wattery nostrils. I felt like crap. Was back to self the next day when we go visit the careless doctor. He looks at the results and says: "you have acid imbalance" and the fool prescribes the same medicine than the New York doctor had years before. He proceeds to small-talk with my mum. I tell the man, "I am choking and that is why I am here." He dismisses the information. And continues. We leave. I am happy. Done.

Not so much. My grandfather is relentless. And he sends me to the Chinese medicine man in Ecuador. He lives in the valley of Cumbaya. Very fitting indeed. He is neither Chinese. Nor a medicine man. He is a wise, well spoken, soft spoken too, doctor from Ecuador, who has specialised in Chinese medicine. He performs acupuncuture and has done wonders with my grandparents and friends of theirs. They blindly believe in his powers and an appointment is booked. This, I like. Alternative. No hospital. I go and become a semi-frequent visitor. He tells me about his practice, he also is a psychoanalyst. He is a smart man. We connect. Formerly living in Chicago and trained across the world. His library is where we meet. And I feel "I can be here as long as you want". We discuss in lengthy detail his philosophy of treatment. Then we delve into my symptoms. I explain them in broad strokes. And I love what I heard, well, at least beyond the long list of exams with "Western medicine" that he needed me to get done [urine, blood, etc] to define my current state.

He said that a reason behind this could be me bottling a truth inside. That he had a patient who had a persistent and very grave laryngitis and who could not be cured for the hell of him with any treatment. He had apparently pursued all sorts of Western treatment that are thinkable but nothing worked. And when brought to him they spoke, and opted for psychoanalysis. He finally confessed he crashed the family chevy out of oblivion and that led to the destruction of a major family asset and source of income. He did not want to be blamed and thus concealed the information and went on to create an elaborate story of an accident and a street front crashing that entailed no responsibility to him. It was clear he had to confess. He was cured days after he spoke with his family. I thought: "oh my dear medicine man... dangerous territory... If you only knew". A seed was planted. I was convinced. This is the reason for my bottling. I do have some major internal truths to relay. Lovely deepest of secrets. And this is indeed the cause for this. But I just remained equanimous. And pretended to simply understand and look at the explanation with full attention, not showing a single bit of a shade of there being the remote possibility of some inner truth causing this type of blockage. I mean, it has been at least three years since any form of intake, either solid or liquid, went down smoothly. And, I did not think the shape I was in was commendable.

He also said that in Chinese medicine, everything, absolutely everything, is focused on the liver. That the liver resembles spring and that from that very organ is where we emit life, mind sprawls from it, and body follows. If the liver is mis-treated, then, chaos ensues. I loved this idea of Spring within. I was ready to sense how his needles would flow my body in order. I wanted him to cure me with this precept. This was the comfortable one where I had no work to do. Other than receive his needles, and let the curvatures on key nerves penetrate my body. I allowed him, thus, to continue. I saw my liver in abrupt transformation. I wanted my urine to be dark and troubled and after his treatment I envisioned it becoming gold and shining. Neither happened.

My liver was in no Spring. I knew this because Medicine Man enlightened me to the fact that clean healthy livers lead to clean healthy decision making. When the liver is not properly springing or blossoming, then one becomes blocked. Decisions of the smallest kind, become gruesome, time consuming processes. We apparently loose the ability to flow and to decide in time spans that are normal. We instead become painstakingly lethargic and over analyze trends, problems, factors. We are blurred. We are fogged. Nothing flows.

I internally built clarity on this. I was blocked. This blockage on the body simply resembled something deeper, in the mind. But signs of knowing, I showed none. It remained internalized. Nothing to say. Not sure what you are saying. Intellectually, I showed my full understanding. But experientially, no comment.

Amazing, how the body, how every single reaction, "somatizes" [and this is a word that I borrow from Spanish, meaning the delivery of a reaction by the body of a thought or feeling or trouble perceived at the mind/soul level]. Every single thought, generating a reaction. Old adages coming from ancient Oriental medicine. Revealing itself in my body. Or at least the perception of it happening. How powerful. I knew. The only way out: speak. Opted for silence, though. Not because I wanted to remain thin. I was not ready for any of it. I am okay with external solution. The internal ones are being transported to my notebooks, to my painting, to my poetry, to my binary and recent professional decisions to break all past structure and try, for the time being, to express indirectly through other media what I care about, what I rebel against to, what I am.

It was obvious that the "blockage" would not be fixed with this alternative. I was not allowing it.

My grandfather thus becomes more obsessed with my well being and books me an appointment with an "otorino-naringologo." I love this word. It is one of my favourites in Spanish. And it depicts the profession of a doctor who focuses on nostrils and respiratory system. Anything above the lungs. He is also renowned. And I thought, "great, here we go again." Skeptical, with my mast of a mother, I go. My father leaves his investing fund and shows up too. I sit with the doctor who is so kind. And he checks me. He listens attentively to my testimony of chocking and then to the experience with his renowned failure of a colleague who chose not to think beyond the acids. He says to me, "are you nervous?" And I say, defensively, "excuse me?" He repeats the question saying that this may be a mind-induced feeling of getting stuck. And I feel "enough with this... you ain't telling me, after all I have done in my 28 years, I am nervous". So I offer to retrieve him an undigested chicken I had for lunch the day before right then. I literally get ready to stand up and show him on his office's trash can. He thought it unnecessary and starts looking for a solution.

I am to take a test whose name I of course cannot remember. It is almost like a manocardiograma. I surrender. Two days later I am back at the hospital. Greeting nurses. Left and right. I go to a room, asked to take my shirt off, my body, slick, fit, there. I am given a cup with a thick white liquid and given instructions: "when I say swallow, you swallow" and then I will tell you how much to take. "How naughty", I thought. Immature. And so I went onto a large machine, a platform that spun me up, down, and put me in semi vertical positions. I had to be in the room of my own due to the radiation. The nurse and machine operator were behind a glass. I swallowed. Gulped. And when asked to turn, I see a legion of medicine students. Their eyes wide open, their mouths open. I caught a glimpse of the nerd amongst them, she was drawling, in front of her was an image on a screen that she was told is rarely seen, or ever seen. They all murmured and wowed every time I took a gulp. Borderline tennis match when the rally between players reaches amazing heights and the crowd growls loudly. I was there, in display, in 270 degrees, suspended on the machine drinking white cement water. Lovely.

I am given permission to un-platform myself and so I do. Shirtless, I come over behind the glass, the students had been whisked off by the young doctor leading them, and ask the machine operator, "so?" and he says, "brother, you cannot swallow at all!". The nerd pops back into the room. I immediately love her. So anal. So dedicated. She clearly escaped the herd seeking to be a doctor even if for minutes. She engages me: "Hello Mister, can I ask, what seems to be the problem?" Bad start, I think. I answer: "I cannot swallow" She asks: "Solids and liquids?" okay, we are improving.. "Yes, I cannot swallow anything" :Oh, okay... and what does it feel like?" And I think, oh no, by the book you fool. "Like I cannot swallow" I brusquely reply. She takes notes. And thinks into herself. I think she wanted more. She thanks me, disappears into the corridor.

A few days later, I come back to the hospital. We meet the "otorino" and he finally delivers the verdict: you have Achalasia. My mother asks, "acha-what?", he repeats: "achalasia."