April 24, 2000
Untitled
The weirdest thing happened yesterday. As is the custom Easter morning, I indulged in a little bit of the dreaded chocolate from the basket. After about half an hour the back of my mouth started feeling raw. Great, some of the chocolate must of contained a bit of nut residue. I have reasonably serious nut allergies, as do other members of my family, so my wife and I are extremely careful about trace element warnings and the like on food packaging. All of the treats we bought this year were clean as far as we could tell. At any rate, I rinsed, gargled, spat, and then resigned myself to the fact that I would have to live with an irritated throat for the remainder of the day. But it wasn’t my throat that was irritated this time, it was towards the back of my palette. I looked into my mouth using the bathroom mirror and noticed that my uvula (you know, that weird hangy thing) was swollen to about four times it’s normal size. Here’s a picture I found that is fairly close to how it appeared. Note that my teeth are much whiter. It looked like someone had hung a translucent, water filled punching bag from the back of my mouth. About mid-afternoon, the swelling went down and everything appeared to be back to normal again. The same site where the picture originated from had this to say:
This is edema of the uvula, also known as Quincke’s edema. This can be caused by an allergic reaction or viral illness. On occasion, a bacterial infection will cause uvular edema. Treatment is with antihistamines and steroids if allergic or viral. Antibiotics are indicated if bacterial infection is suspected.
That makes it sound a lot worse than it really was.
This item was posted by .
Categories:
Leave a comment or send a trackback from your own site.