“Can you burp?”
That’s how I started a lot of conversations in 2020. I’m not sure when I learned that the inability to burp was a thing that other people experienced: maybe it was in 2018 when I met a new friend and she said that she and her sister had “the croaks” after they ate and I was like, “wait, you know ‘the croaks?!’”
(I find it disgusting to discuss bodily functions like this, I’m an uptight bitch who hates any humor that involves a toilet or anything that gets near it, but here I am. None of this involves ass-related stuff, I’d sooner die—read on at your own risk though.)
Anyway.
‘The croaks’ are the gurgling noises that come up through my throat almost every time after I eat or drink: they sound like a frog, or water bubbles in a tank, or a creaky old ship. They’re not painful but they are uncomfortable. I’d always assumed that they were happening to everyone else and I convinced myself that no one could hear mine, even though they’d betrayed my location many times in childhood games of hide & go seek. Back in college, I learned that drinking beer made me so uncomfortable that I’d rather drink cheap vodka straight than play pong—smart, I know. I always knew that carbonation was a problem for me, but I didn’t know that ‘I can’t burp’ was an actual issue.
So in 2018 I’d discovered that ‘the croaks’ were an ailment that afflicted other people. At some point after that, I stumbled upon the NoBurp subreddit—a place that actually exists. At some point after that, it was made into a wiki-like website that explained the inability to burp as a true capital C condition: “formally, it’s known as retrograde cricopharyngeus dysfunction. . .R-CPD occurs when the cricopharyngeus muscle cannot relax enough to let the gas in your stomach get out of your mouth.”
Disgusting!
Bloating. Pain. Suffering. You can read more about it on its website, if you’re so inclined, but I don’t know if you’re into spending time on other people’s dysfunctions. Here’s the point: being unable to burp is now classified as a real disorder by a lot of, uh, respected physicians. And it actually has a cure: Botox.
Recently, I found myself staring down at my Brandy Melville button-down rib knit cardigan and yoga pants in a bright white exam room at Philadelphia’s premier plastic surgeon’s office thinking (not because of my face, but because of my wardrobe): “jesus, when did I get so fucking old?”
I was there for masseter (jaw) and temporalis (temples) muscle botox: the latest in my many attempts at improving the disaster that is my TMJD, or ‘fucked up jaw problems’. Yes, I grind my teeth at night. Yes, I’ve tried a mouthguard, magnesium, and melatonin. No, I don’t think any of this is interesting or particularly unique. No, I’m not projecting my own insecurities about discussing my many problems onto some imagined reader of my Substack….
Why a plastic surgeon and not an orthodontist or some other ‘more medical’ seeming doctor who might be covered by insurance, you ask? Because I want the best and I’ve heard horror stories: Botox that wasn’t injected deep enough and drifted to the smile muscles and left a friend of mine in L.A. lopsided for months, stuff like that. I’d love to not spend $1000 trying to weaken my chewing/clenching/grinding/nightmare muscles, but maybe more than that, I’d really love to weaken those muscles without fucking up my face because I am vain and insecure just like everybody else, thank you very much.
You still aren’t judging and you don’t really care, I know. Shut up.
Did it work? Maybe. It’s been a little more than two weeks since that Botox and my jaw is less mindlessly clenched, but I’m still waking up with the occasional headache, still feeling the time-to-time tension. Now that it’s less yakked the fuck up, my jaw sort of hangs out in a more almost-underbite-y way, something I can only describe as ‘Keira Knightley-esque’, at best.
But we started all this talking about the burping, right? (RIP Robert Durst.) So Botox can fix it, relax that throat muscle enough that one’s throat might relax enough to let one burp and no longer experience the bloating, the pain, the humiliating croaks. One of the leading (???) doctors for this procedure happens to be in Philadelphia and I went to see him a month or so ago and he stuck a scope through my nose and looked at my throat and took a picture of it: I’ll spare you the photo, it looks like, of course, an abstract vagina. He said that fixing my problem would likely be no problem: all I had to do was go under general anesthesia (in a surgery OR, the whole shebang) for a few minutes so they could stick a needle into my throat (via my neck, I’m assuming, but I honestly cannot remember all the details). He was a warm, thoughtful, thorough type of doctor: a gentle father-like type who made corny jokes that put me at ease, who answered questions not only as I asked them, but just as the worry so much as appeared on my face.
“Would you like to schedule that now?”
Reader, I did. I scheduled that shit so fast. I scheduled it so fast that I forgot that I didn’t realize I scheduled it for Valentine’s day (not too big of a deal) and that I’d be going to Miami two weeks after the procedure (kind of a big deal).
Here’s the thing about throat Botox: it seems like it can have a lot of effects. Not necessarily side effects, but like, effects that happen when you purposefully inject a neck muscle that helps control swallowing with a neurotoxic protein intended on (partially) paralyzing that muscle. I spent Sunday night scrolling the NoBurp subreddit, reading stories of people who had it done: some were left whispering for weeks, some had breathing problems, some had random muscle spasms, some had acid reflux, and, overwhelmingly, most said it was one of the best choices they ever made.
Did I ultimately decide not to go through with the this week so that I could reschedule the surgery and for after my Miami trip, thereby making sure I can go to Miami without needing to whisper or take Tums the entire time?
Yes, I did.
Am I feeling a little crazy because of all this? Asbolutely.
Will I stop asking myself questions as if those questions are coming from you? No.
Xoxo, weird Botox girl.