Bananas are not the only fruit

This is a curious thing, but I have wondered about it for some time, so here goes, I am going to share...

I have achalasia - I am sure many of you know this by now and I had surgery (a heller myotomy in case you are interested) in early 2009 to treat this condition. I think achalasia is a condition and not a disease, since it is a situation where your gullet doesn't work properly and the normal knock on implication is that the valve at the top of your stomach won't open to let food pass. As an aside, I don't really know what are conditions, what are diseases and what are merely complaints, but there you go, you could fill a book with stuff I don't know! Achalasia varies a bit in how bad it can be, but in my instance, the nerves to my oesophagus just don't work at all so I have no opening of the valve at the top of my stomach and no peristalsis (the squeezing action that pushes food down), past the initial swallow in my throat. The surgery opened the valve (so now it doesn't close) and my gullet acts like a drainpipe which I just shove food through. There is no cure for achalasia, but the surgery treats the worst symptom and I am very happy with the result that I have had. I eat fairly normally and most things are fine and nice to eat (unless they are swede or turnip - both of which I hate!).

The odd thing is, that there are some foods, which I still cannot eat at all. Now I understand that before I had the valve opened, anything lumpy was going to be a problem, but now, if a food is well cooked or soft, I don't see that there should be an issue. So, why is it that when I cooked sweet and sour chicken, I swallowed it and it just sat there, just below my throat and refused to budge? Copious quantities of water (ok, I own up, it was wine!) and it went down. Maybe it's the sour bit that does it? I understand lettuce leaves (low gravitational coefficient) and not chewing your toast properly (too lumpy) but I just didn't get the sweet and sour thing at all.

Odder still is fruit. Especially 'big' fruit. I don't really mean melons here...but apples for example. Apples are just awful! Raw apples are simply impossible and even stewed can be an issue if not mushy enough. Pineapple, orange, melon and pears - all a problem to a greater or lesser degree. Strawberries, raspberries, grapes, blueberries and prunes - all fine - but then they are little. The odd one out in this whole equation, is the banana - comes under the category of a 'big' fruit, swallows like a small fruit. So what's that about? And why fruit? Why apples especially? And even odder is that my surgeon particularly asked me about apples and if I had a problem with them. They are considered to be one of the defining questions towards helping with an achalasia diagnosis. All of which is kind of OK I guess, but I just wonder why...what is it about the humble apple which makes it such an issue? And in that bunny hopping brain way that I have, I wonder if that's what the all problem was with Snow White - that apple she had wasn't poisoned at all, she just had achalasia!