Hear Me Roar
I’m halfway through my first two week course of oral chemo, which I am supposed to call medicine and not poison, even though we all know what it actually is. I have to take four pills each morning and four each evening. One of the pills is small and three are large enough to require me to take them one at a time.
I am not a great pill taker under the best of circumstances. Some people can take a whole plastic cups o’ meds and down them in one go without a drop of water. Not me. Unless they are pretty small or at least slidey gel caps, I take a more plodding approach to my pills. And still they sometimes get stuck in my gullet and I desperately swallow more water to speed up their slow, slow crawl down my esophagus.
Within a few days of starting chemo, my body (or my brain, perhaps) began rebelling against the forced swallowing of poison/medicine. I started gagging the moment I inserted the first one and had to have a pitched battle with my reflexes to get the damn thing past this well-intentioned defense mechanism.
To deal with this problem, I went looking for help in 1971. That’s right, I called on Helen Reddy, patron saint of women who have had Enough of This Shit.
Here’s my strategy:
I take a deep breath and call Helen’s signature tune, I Am Woman, to my mind. If you are a whippersnapper and don’t know the song, you…
