Swallowing Pills

Whenever I'm faced with the choice between sickly medicinal syrup and a nice solid pill, I choose the pill.  But that was not always the case.  Where as now I may be able to swallow pills the size of the tip of my pinky, I remember a time when pills were my worst nightmare.

I could not always swallow pills with one gulp of water, so I tried to avoid taking pills at all costs. I equated pills to sickness, so I washed my hands often and thoroughly.  And I was always updated on vaccines and got my annual flu shot.

But whenever flu season rolled around, I always got a nasty sickness no matter how much I tried to prevent it from happening.  If I wanted to feel better and heal quicker, I had to take a pill.  Turning the pill into a mush that I could swallow was a process done so often that the steps were ingrained into my head.  I observed my parents as they mashed up the pill into a fine powder and funneled it onto a spoon.  Sharp bits of the red coating would stick out in the midst of the white landscape.  They diluted it with water, so the powder wouldn't stick in my mouth.  Then came the worst part: swallowing the medicine.  It didn't help that I was feeling sick and sore most of these times.  I pinched my nose and  gulped down the murky water.  I tried to wash down the lasting tastes of the pill, but it was all in vain.  The bitterness had stained my mouth and a spoonful of sugar was not going to help.

Most of the time, all I had to take was Advil or Motrin, not as large on the scale of pill sizes.  But one time, I had to take a pill that was twice as large  Instead of taking it with a spoonful of water, I dumped the powder into a cup of water, thinking that it would make it less bitter.  And boy was I wrong.  Instead of getting it over with in one swift swallow, all I did was suffer through it slowly with many sips.  After that, I was tired of my method of taking pills.

If I could swallow the powder in one gulp, why couldn't I swallow the pill that way too?  I wasn't afraid of choking, but the idea of not being able to chew something before swallowing made me uncomfortable.  The thought of it may had made me felt that way, but I would never know how until I tried it out.  The next time I had to take an Advil, I put it on the spoon, took a couple of deep breathes, and swallowed in down in with a huge gulp of water.  I was really surprised when I realized there was nothing in my mouth--no pill, no bitter taste.  I had done it without mashing the pill to bits.  I don't have any specific method to swallowing pills, but there is research out there on ways to make it easier.

Ever since then, I've saved myself countless times from the bitter innards of a pill and the thick medicinal syrup.