Eating Curry Nightmare #2

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Eating Curry Nightmare #2

by Harry Black-Tongue©

This isn't supposed to happen during dinner. It's not supposed to ever happen. There's
never a good time for a bump to appear on the top of your tongue. The other night I
got one as sudden and unwelcome as a speed bump. It wasn't because I bit my
tongue. It just popped out - all by itself.

I knew immediately what it was. I've seen it in National Geographic. I fled from the table in a
panic without excusing myself and raced for the bathroom mirror. Just as I feared. Pellagra.

"IH GAWH, HOOKH HAH HISCH!" I bellowed, pulling my tongue tight like thick taffy.

My wife arrived in time for triage. "What is it, Dear?"

"HELLAGRAH!"

A magenta pod lay grafted on the dorsum of my tongue, right on top, in the middle, staring back
at us like a dark button on a pink blazer.

"It's not pellagra. Did you bite your tongue?"

"HOH," I said, shaking my head, "ISH HELLAGRAH!"

"It's not pellagra," she sighed, leaving. I hate that. She approaches medicine the way addicts
approach recovery: from denial. I didn't get any sympathy that time I had Buffalo Hump
Syndrome, either.

"Too much curry," she shouted down the hall.

She was probably right about the curry. Eating has become an experiment around here since her
sister came back from India. We no longer have a kitchen, we have a laboratory. We now have
items in our refrigerator that are registered with the EPA. One of them, a jar of vindaloo curry
paste is so toxic it appears to be eating right through its own glass container. There's always a
pool of it on the shelf no matter how often it's wiped up. I had a dream the other night that it
ate right through the floor into the garage and Sigourney Weaver was sent out to check for
Aliens.

These are the chemicals we put on our food. My belly has been burning for weeks. It's like trying
to digest hydrochloric acid. If you spilled this stuff in the street they'd call HazMat.

After dinner I disappeared into the study to research tongue disease. Just to be sure. This
usually doesn't take long. My entire medical library consists of a garage sale version of "Gray's
Anatomy" the kids used for their sex education, and a 1955 edition of the "Merck Manual" that's
so old it has hieroglyphics on the cover. I think it came out of a pyramid. This is the same as
consulting "The Congressional Record" for the Meaning of Life.

What I read about pellagra gave me a headache. I was right. It was pellagra, the first signs of
which are lesions on the tongue, accompanied by an assortment of dementia, cutaneous,
mucous membrane and gastrointestinal symptoms. I had them all: a stomach ache, a head ache

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Eating Curry Nightmare #2

and a dark lesion. It left no doubt. Never mind that pellagra is caused by eating nothing but corn.

Then it got worse.

The symptoms also indicated sprue. You don't want to know about sprue. Glossitis was next.
Glossitis is an acute inflammatory disturbance of the tongue. The book said this disturbance
"may be either a primary disease of the tongue or a symptom of disease elsewhere." That pretty
much covers it, huh? Something was wrong. Somewhere.

I should have quit then and begun vitamin B therapy. Instead I continued to explore the etiology
of the murrain in my mouth. The path lead directly to Lingua Nigra, a.k.a., Black Hairy Tongue.
The prognosis: "Swelling, protrusion, obstruction, suffocation. Articulation, mastication and
swallowing at first become painful, then impossible. Suppuration may occur." I have no idea
what that means but I think it's a form of strangulation, caused by trying to swallow a mitten. I
was doomed.

I stared at the wall, fast-forwarding to the end of my life, seeing myself lost and alone,
somewhere in the Congo, coughing up fur balls.

By this time my wife had retired and I found her dozing in bed with "Leaving Home" lying open
against her. The reading light was still on. At least she hadn't started to pack.

I sat down and read to her about Black Hairy Tongue.

"Hmmmm?" She stirred, rolling toward me, touching my arm softly.

"Are you listening? My tongue is growing hair. It says I'll strangle on it - on the hair from my
own tongue!"

Her eyes were still closed. She was smiling softly, the way she does when meditation permits
only pleasant thoughts. She hadn't heard a word.

"Did you hear me? It's Black Hairy Tongue. I've caught Black Hairy Tongue." My voice shuddered
and disappeared. Flaunting visions of my own demise shimmied in front of me again. In the end
they would find me hunched over my desk, face-down in the Merck Manual, attempting to
breath with something resembling a badger in my mouth. Rescuers wouldn't know whether to
call the paramedics or the Humane Society.

She snuggled closer. "Is that a new character in your novel?"

"What?"

"Harry Black-Tongue."

"Huh?"

"Come to bed, Dear."

###

Harry Black-Tongue, a.k.a. Douglas Page, writes about marriage peril from Pine Mountain, California.
It's a full time job.

Comments? Questions? Corrections? Assignments? douglaspage@earthlink.net

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