Medicated

I can't swallow pills.

At least, not very easily. Recently, as in the past few years, I've become a bit more comfortable popping pills that are reasonably sized and/or gel coated. But Those huge vitaminy pills that smell like butt and you can actually taste the vitamin flavor? Forget it.

I've always had problems with this. I remember being sick in middle school, and my mother was still bringing me chewable aspirin. I think back then, I just didn't know how to do it. Later on, in high school, I got a sinus infection coupled with bronchitis, or something like that, and had to take antibiotics. Apparently they didn't come in chewables so I would spend about 10 minutes every evening psyching myself up for a fit of gagging.

A lot of pills got ruined that way.

I don't throw up, so at worst, I'll just gag my brains out and the pill will just kind of dissolve in my mouth. Sometimes, if the pill actually started to go down, usually by accident, the gagging will bring it back up.

I have similar issues with cough medicine. It just won't go down. Somehow instead of oozing down my throat like it's supposed to, it ends up being projected across the room. I'm not sure of the exact mechanisms surrounding this phenomenon. I usually try to avoid it.

I warned my husband for many years about my inability to take medication. I don't think he believed me. I think he called me a baby.

One winter, when we were first dating, I got sick. My cough was turning into that deep hacking cough, and I think it was annoying him more than anything else because it seemed to be consistently occurring at precisely the same moment as important dialogue in the movie we were trying to watch.

He announced I was going to take my medicine. He bundled me up and brought me to the drugstore. I argued the entire way, but was way too sick to really protest with my full effort. I think I said something really threatening, like "OK but you'll be sorry...."

He let me choose my drug. Since morphine wasn't an option, I chose a liquid cough syrup in an attractive color and flavor. I don't remember specifically which one it was, but I remember that I shook a lot of bottles to determine which was the thinnest mixture, and went with that one.

We went back home and my husband poured out the dosage into the little plastic cup. He sat it in front of me on the kitchen table. I timidly picked it up and stuck the tip of my tongue into the syrup.

My husband told me that's not the way to do it. He announced that I need to chug it all at one time. He told me to hold my nose, tilt my head back and just pour it down.

I still wasn't sure about this. I stuck my tongue a little farther in, and jerked my head back in disgust upon actually tasting the medicine flavor. By this time, my husband was sitting next to me at the table, saying Do it. Just do it. Do it. Chug it. Now. All at once." He was saying it really intensely, and leaning forward and pounding his fist on the table.

Finally I gave in. I looked up, pinched my nose, closed my eyes, opened my mouth and prayed for the best. The liquid slowly oozed into my mouth. I tried to swallow, but was unable. I kept trying, but my throat was glued shut. The concept of what was actually in my mouth occurred to me and I immediately started gagging.

Cough syrup went everywhere. Down my chin, into my hands, into my lap, onto the table, the floor. I think there might have been some coming out of my nose. My throat was on fire, and my nose hurt too. So I did what any normal twenty-something year old would do at this point. I started bawling.

Needless to say, my husband felt awful. Here was his girlfriend who had warned him that she doesn't do well taking medicines, and when he practically forces them down her throat she gags all over the place and ends up crying.

He cleaned up the mess, settled me back down on the couch and went out to try to get some cough drops. Those I can take. He returned with not only the cough drops, but also a box of Sudafed Cold and Cough. He said he wouldn't blame me if I didn't want to try, but maybe these would help. They were liquid gels, which I can do sometimes.

I swallowed them down (he didn't make fun of me for putting them all the way on the back of my tongue, filling my mouth up with soda, then vigorously shaking my head and swallowing the whole thing) and we continued to watch our movie.

About 10 minutes later I said I was going to bed because my face felt itchy. Once I brushed my teeth and settled down, I realized that I felt something funny in my throat every time I swallowed. I called my husband into the room, and he looked at my throat with a flashlight.

Hives. I had broken out into hives, and there was one on my uvula. I slowly drank a glass of ice water to keep it from getting bigger and closing up my airway while he called the pharmacist. Eventually the hives went away and I was able to fall asleep. I went the remainder of this cold unmedicated.

When I was pregnant, I had to hide the prenatals, which are freakin horse pills and do not come in gel caps, in yogurt and drink it with milk or Nestle Quick to get it down. Sometimes it took several tries but I did what I had to do. Other than that, I was still taking Centrum chewables as my multi up until recently.

I went through a phase in the past year or so where I was feeling miserable. I had just taken myself off an inhuman dose of antidepressants, which left me zombie-like. I evaluated my diet and decided that supplementing might not be a bad idea, since my diet lacks a lot.

So every morning I take a multivitamin, 2 fish oil, 2 digestive enzymes, and 2 5-HTP. The fish oil pills, which I have been avoiding taking for years since it's freakin fish oil, are huge but gel-coated and lightly flavored with lemon to avoid "fish burps." The digestive enzymes are not huge but they are not gel-coated, so they taste tinny and vitaminy. And the multivitamins are ginormous capsules but smell horrible and you can see the little grains of the vitamins and minerals all crushed up and completely grosses me out. The 5-HTP are small capsules- the only one in the group I could actually take with plain water if need be.

Here's my method: Every morning I take a little cup of pudding down with me when I go to take my pills. I take a spoonful of the pudding and insert a pill into it then cover it up with more pudding. Larger pills go first so there's enough pudding to last, and if I should run out for some reason, I'm not stuck with the monster pills to suck down. I put the pudding in my mouth and, making sure that no part of the pill touches my mouth, swallow it all down in one go.

I get made fun of to no end by the few people who know of my procedure. But it certainly works better than gagging everything up.