If you want a new experience, try having a little bit of your uvula snipped off under local anesthetic.

About a month ago I felt a little pain while swallowing food. I went to the doc and she thought she saw a little white spot on the uvula, so she told me to see the Ear Nose and Throat doctors. It took a month before my appointment arrived, but today was the day. They agreed there’s a little ulceration (in the same sense that a canker sore is an ulceration) and they wanted to look at it. So they numbed me up with, of all things, a banana-flavored spray and then a shot of something directly into the uvula (that’s lots of fun. Hold the tongue out of the way with a metal tongue depressor, use forceps to hold the thing still, then inject). After about ten minutes the doctor went in with forceps and scissors and cut a little hunk off.

The anesthetic made me sound like I was talking underwater, and it’s now worn off. Ouch.