That night after work I found a soup ladle with a straight flat handle and immediately resumed my practice. “Young doctor,” he said, “don’t you know the throat is flat? You can only slide flat things down there.
Imagine my surprise when this patient turned out to be the very same sword swallower from the X-ray! And imagine this, when I told him all about my attempts with the fishing rod. I would always ask what my patients did for a living, in case it was relevant, and it turned out he used to swallow swords. One of my first patients was an old man with a persistent cough. Three years later I was a trainee doctor on a real medical ward. Eventually, for a second time, I gave up on my dream. I didn’t own a sword so used a fishing rod instead, but no matter how many times I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and tried, I’d get as far as an inch and it would get stuck. But now I understood its value, and instantly my childhood dream sprang back to life. At the time, I had not been too proud: I didn’t think it was an important skill. My dream was not over! A few weeks earlier, when studying reflexes, I had discovered that of all my classmates, I could push my fingers farthest down my throat without gagging. One afternoon at medical school, in an otherwise dry lecture about the way the throat worked, our professor explained, “If something is stuck, the passage can be straightened by pushing the chin bone forward.” To illustrate, he showed an X-ray of a sword swallower in action. My parents’ dream, though, was for me to get the good education they never had. When I was a child my dream was to become a circus artist. I love the spectacle and the sense of amazement and delight at witnessing the seemingly impossible.
I love to watch a juggler throwing screaming chain saws in the air, or a tightrope walker performing ten flips in a row.
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