Total Pageviews

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Deglutition


de·glu·ti·tion  [dee-gloo-tish-uhn]
noun Physiology .
the act or process of swallowing.



And yes that is a picture of a snake swallowing a sheep.

Who knew right?

I'm quite familiar with the deglutition process. We all are. But it's one of those involuntary processes that we don't think about very often. That is until we get sick.

One year I went to the doctor with a horrible sore throat, fever, chills, the whole works. I expected to leave the office with a diagnosis of the flu. Instead I left with mono and strep. Even the doctor was a little impressed.

So I had two of the worst throat illnesses at the same time. Let me just tell you, deglutition was not fun. It got so bad at one point that I had to go to the hospital for steroid injections to take down the swelling in my throat. I imagine it felt similar to trying to swallow a sheep. Though I'll never try and replicate the experiment.

Tomorrow's word is the letter E. It has 11 letters and begins with EL.  Will you be the one to make the correct guess?  I've been really impressed with the guesses given so far, so keep it up!


8 comments:

  1. Sorry, wait. A sheep? An actual sheep?

    Poor you, those throat infections are awful by themselves, let alone at the same time!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not just a sheep, a pregnant sheep, so technically I guess it's 2 sheep!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ick for the picture...I do not like snakes at all...anyway, I am returning your visit to my blog :) Is the word for tomorrow electricity?

    ReplyDelete
  4. O.M.G. That photo is insane! It made me think of the mint that i swallowed whole last week but it got stuck half way to its destination...that was PAIN! I just didn't eat with strep...bless your heart! ELephantoid???

    ReplyDelete
  5. made me gulp. Thanks for visiting Word Splash. You have some very cool words and pictures. I look forward to the rest of the alphabet.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Not a word often used, deglutition. In fact, my spell check doesn't know it. Love arcane words.
    :)
    Kate
    Follow & A to Z Visiting: http://whemkateblogs.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wow! no matter how long at stared at the picture, I just couldn't figure it out. :) Great vocab lesson here. Even my husband was impressed when I showed it to him. LOL

    ReplyDelete