Worthy of a Blog Post

Rhett and I attended a health screening by one of his coworker's husbands last week and realized we needed to make a few improvements to our health. We ordered a few different vitamins that were appropriate to us individually, and just got them yesterday. This is my lot--for every meal:Anyone see a problem with this? Probably not, unless you're me and you can't swallow pills. For years and years now, I've tried. When I was younger, we just mashed up the pill and put it in orange juice, on a sandwich, in yogurt, in anything. But it was so disgusting that it made me almost vomit, and the taste lasted for hours. My first unsuccessful tries at an alternate swallowing method (other than just popping them in and swallowing--like everyone else can do . . . they make it look so easy . . .) was my freshman year of college, twelve years ago. My roommate's boyfriend took over and started coating the pills with powdered sugar. I was naive and didn't know what he was doing. But it didn't matter, because it didn't work.

Throughout the years after that, I've had people try to help me in all sorts of different ways--put it at the back of your tongue, put it on the front of your tongue, put a little water in before and then put the pill in with some more water, etc. Of course, I could swallow pills if I could half them or quarter them, but that doesn't work for capsules.

Rhett finds it quite amusing, and whenever I need to take a capsule, I find him suddenly mulling around the kitchen, finding little tasks to do, like sweeping again or scraping the week old ketchup off the counter, just so he can be around to watch me. I'll try putting it in and swallowing it with water, and it gets stuck, right in the middle of my throat. Oooooh, how it hurts. The natural reflex of my throat is to push it up and out, while the only thing I can think to do (and Rhett, my now personal coach, tells me to do), is swallow more water to get it to go down. I can't swallow any more once the pill is stuck, so when I try swallowing more water, the water just comes shooting out my mouth. I also can't even swallow my own saliva, so I have to just stand over the sink with my mouth open and drool, drool, drool. For some reason, my nose starts getting really runny in these moments too. And I'm gagging and gagging, trying to get it up and out. Usually weird gooey stuff comes out as I gag, but never the pill. I'm not exaggerating about any of this. (Yes, Andrew and Maria, this is what you heard in the background of our last skype session.)

So you can see why Rhett thinks it's so funny. He's even thought about taping it and posting it on youtube to see how many hits we can get. I laugh about it too--afterward.

So this morning, my first day of taking my new vitamins (and sadly turning over those yummy, gummy Flinstones), I tried breaking open the capsules and putting them in a smoothie. It was a lot of work, but it was going to be worth it, right? No more writhing over the sink??? The smoothie wasn't too bad. It was one of my favorite recipes: spinach (because we didn't have kale), pineapple juice, blueberries, and fresh shaved ginger. I drank the smoothie, but on the second to last swig, I got a taste of the vitamins and started gagging. I almost threw everything up. All the vitamins had settled at the bottom. And I had one more swig left. Rhett suggested I put some water in the glass and just chug it. I filled it half full, and chugged, barely keeping it down. At least the vitamins didn't get stuck in my teeth and last for hours like when I chew them.

So at lunch, I decided to try one of Rhett's crazy suggestions from this morning after my near-vomiting-it-all-back-up experience. I took the smaller vitamins, no problem, and then I had the three capsules left. I poured a little olive oil in a bowl and then tossed the capsules in. I rolled them around to get them coated really well. My heart was racing, and I was starting to get lightheaded. I started humming the Rocky theme song, put a little bit of water in my mouth, scooped up one of the capsules with a spoon and then dropped it into my mouth. Some of the water slid out of my mouth as I opened it, but I didn't care. I was going for it. I took a big swig of water from my glass and swallowed. Down it went! I couldn't even feel it! I took the other two (separately, of course) without any problems. Is my husband brilliant or what!?!

I've been talking to Rhett a lot this year about doing something wild and crazy because it's leap year and the year I turn 30. I want to someday say, "Remember that leap year that I turned 30 and we did this?" Well, I'd say we just had our first "wild and crazy" of 2012. It's going to be a good year.