Gag reflex

This is not a pleasant thing to read. There is more information in it than I would share face-to-face. It is gross. So, stop reading now, if you're wise.







OK, I've warned you.






I have a very sensitive gag reflex. Lots of things make me gag. Drives my dental hygienist and my dentist crazy, though they are kind about it.

It all comes down to swallowing pills. I can swallow anything that is in a capsule. I don't know why but I cam. But pills are an issue. A pill the size of a capsule I can easily swallow makes me gag.

What I do is chew pills up. Even something the size of an un-coated aspirin is impossible for me to swallow.

I know this and know it well and from long experience.

And yet today I was about to take a Claritin-D 24 hour pill and thought to myself, "if this is time release and I chew it up the whole time release thing might be screwed up.

I'm looking at one of them now. It's not as large as capsules I swallow with ease. But I should have know better--it's a pill twice the size of an aspirin--but I tried to swallow it anyway.

It got stuck in my esophagus somewhere, just below my breast bone is where it seemed to be. I could breathe fine but anything I tried to eat or drink wouldn't go down. (Here's the unpleasant part I tried to warn you about--a piece of white bread with butter came back up in the sink. Nothing I tried to drink would go down. I even had to spit out my saliva from noon until almost 4:30.

I was just about to go to Urgent Care down on South Main Street when I took a sip of water and it went into my stomach. Since then I've eaten a crab cake and a hamburger and a salad. It's fine.

Bern was reasonable and kind to me for those 4 and 1/2 hours. But she finally said, "You know you can't swallow something like that. You've known it for years. Why would you try today?"

A reasonable question.

I started to try to explain about my concern about time release but I knew it was futile.

I do know I can't swallow that and yet I tried to anyway.

It's sort of like the difference between rats and human beings. Rats will go down the maze to where the cheese used to be once or twice but then not again. Human beings keep thinking there will be 'cheese' down that path when they should know better.

Rats are smarter than me, that's for sure.