When North is South and South is North

I have written before about the insults of cancer. I.V.s , needles, poop tests, pee tests, anything that comes out of your body, they’ll collect it and test it. I have to take about 60-70 pills a day at four different sittings. I say sitting because you can’t really do much else when you’ve got a little dish of 16 pills that you have to gulp down. It takes concentration to dole them all out in the right amount and then take one at a time. Pill goes to tongue, water glass comes to lips, surround pill with water, swallow. Sounds simple right? Well once in a while concentration gets broken at the wrong moment and things can go really, really wrong. So I am cautious about my pill taking. You would be too.

In the past I have swallowed a little wrong and the pill scrapes my throat on the way down. It feels like a sore throat for a couple of hours. About once a day the pill just goes down wrong and I get indigestion and burps for 15 minutes.

But the worst, the absolute worst, is when a pill goes up your nose. That’s right it has happened three times now, out of several thousand pills I have consumed in the last year. It happened tonight; I was all prepped: pill on the right spot on the tongue, water in the right proportion, and the pill was on its way. Suddenly to my left someone says something that I must turn towards and that medium sized phosphorus pill goes up my right sinus hole. You know, the little tunnel that connects your mouth to your nose? It is the reason that 6th graders at the lunch table can make their friend’s milk come out of their nose if they tell a joke with perfect timing.

So the little pill goes up my nose hole and gets wedged. It is painful instantly. Stupidly, the first thing I did was blow my nose (wrong direction) thereby wedging it farther up there. Then we ran for the nose flusher. The nose flusher is one of those cold prevention gimmicks; a little plastic 2oz. squirt bottle that comes with little packet of special medicine (salt). It has a top that fits in your nostril and you squeeze the salt water in and flush the boogies out. Or in my case the Urocit K potassium supplement tablet.

The first time it happened I was home alone and had no idea what to do. All I knew is that my sinuses were on fire and something was pushing against my brain right behind my eye. After a few minutes of whimpering I remembered the sinus flusher. I went looking for it but could not find it. It is hard to look for things when you are in agony. Luckily the Chickenhawk had her cell phone with her AND knew where the thing was.

This evening she saw the look on my face and went and got the flusher for me. I flushed and I flushed but nothing would come out, well not the pill anyway. I did start to feel relief so I took a break and finished taking all my other pills. As I did, the pain welled back up and I went back to the flusher. After a few more vigorous tries, the partially dissolved pill fell into the back of my throat and the pain was gone.
Another day in the life…