We left for Boston early that morning, before the sun came up. Everything seemed brown and murky like the way a foggy sky looks under orange fluorescent street lamps. I didn't want the ride to the city to end. I would have felt perfectly happy sitting in traffic for eight hours if it could postpone what I was about to go though for another day.
"Are they going to put the tube in right when we get there?" I asked my mom nervously.
"Probably not," my mom responded, hoping to calm me down.
When we arrived in the waiting room, it felt like the shortest wait I'd ever experienced at a doctor's office. Almost immediately after calling me in, the nurse said, "Okay, let's get started."
"What?! Just like that?" I asked.
Yup just like that. She opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic, sterile packet with a long, snaky tube inside and told me what we would do and that it would feel like pressure or the twinge of a sneeze in my sinuses. Then she slathered on some clear jelly to the tip of the tube in preparation. That's when I started to get really nervous.
"Alright, now just relax," the nurse said. Yeah right. I wondered while she expertly instructed me how to administer a feeding tube if she had actually ever tried it on herself to really see what it felt like. She handed me a small cup of water that I was instructed to drink at a key point in the process. I hated this already.
"Okay, here we go." She slowly brought the lubricated tube up to my right nostril--I could smell the jelly. And up it went. Up my nose until I could feel it under my eyes. They started to water. I could feel it bend over the arc of my nasal cavity and start down my throat. It tickled my gag reflex a little, and at that moment I was told to start drinking the water.
"Swallow, swallow, swallow," my nurse coached. I felt like I was being cheered on at a deranged pep rally. So I swallowed and gasped until the tube had reached my stomach. Finally it was over. The nurse then pulled out a long, thin wire that had been the tube the whole time. (I still don't know why that was there, and why they don't take it out before putting it through your face.) I just sat there in shock, my eleven-year-old brain trying to comprehend what had just happened to me and accept that this would be my life from now on--my punishment for not eating. I had only been sitting for about a minute with this contraption dangling out of my face when the nurse suggested we take it out. God, I never even thought about the 'taking it out' part. I had just barely come to grips with it going in. I told her I wanted to do it myself, and she let me. She said to do it quick like taking off a band aid, so I did. I got it out of me as fast as possible. I felt it travel up my throat, through my nose, and out again. Almost no sooner after it was out, the nurse said, "Okay, now you can try putting it in yourself now." I did. It never got any simpler.
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