Trina Machacek: With medicine, size does matter

Wondering about stuff is what a brain does when there is a break in the adventures of life. Say you have been up to your eyeballs in getting kids ready for school or getting the cat to the vet to find out you will soon be the proud owner of yet another five or more mouths to feed. Well after the momma cat has raised them to cat food eating stage. Yes that same momma cat that you promised you would “take care of” concerning babies after the last time you were blessed with six tiny and very cute new faces. But I do go on don’t I? Let’s mewoove along.

So your brain takes a short break from life as you know it and bang new thoughts of this and that slam in and poof you are thinking about pills. Not the pill like, “Little Sammy is so cute. What a pill.” No not the Sammy pill of cuteness. I’m here to talk of pills that will do EVERTHING.

I am not the first nor will I be the last to discuss the effectiveness of miracle meds. So let’s not do that. Rather I would like to talk about swallowing said pills. You know, the big ones. The huge, dry, and sometimes oddly shaped pills that horse, cow and even big dog owners sometimes need some type of apparatus to get down the throat of the poor animal to release the miracle of the mixture. Yes those pills. But for humans. Or as the new and funny cat and dog videos now call us, “Hoomans.”

Whether you are a purist and only use nature to keep you going or like me, a regular person, who listens or tries to listen, to medical professionals and take maintenance medicine, sometime in your life you will be pleasantly surprised by the size of the pill it is suggested you take. To keep things moving, or stop things from moving to fast or make something change to get your innards back into line.

A line I might add that in some far off lab was determined had to be drawn to keep us all on the same track. I have to add here that all lines in my opinion are drawn in the sand — they are ever changing. Again I have tripped on a huge pill.

When I was a kid some ailment befell me and one fine morning I remember my mother putting in front of me four HUGE pills that the poor woman was supposed to get into my tiny mouth at which point I was then to swallow. Hold your horses there Guinevere. Did I mention they were huge? Big. Big as trying to get a size 16 rear end into a size 4 pants—pants that have no stretchy stuff in the fabric. Yes that huge.

Poor mom tried and tried. I just kept spitting them out. She finally put one in a spoonful of honey so the pill would have to go down because believe it or not — you cannot spit out honey! HAHA. But. Yes a honey covered “but.” Yikes. But I must have finally taken the silly things. Or I just got better by the miracle of being an outside going, dirt eating, mud pie playing kid that nature sometimes takes care of. Took me a long time to appreciate honey after that.

Today I take a few “maintenance” meds and for the most part they just go in and down. But there is this one. Isn’t there one in every crowd? One that I can hear laughing at me as I approach the golden colored plastic bottle with its dang white child proof cap that sits on top it’s locked top as a sentinel guarding its contents. Such another discussion!

Every time I pry open that “pill safe” out jumps a dancing thing that I know has been placing bets on how many times I will have to shake my head with a full mouth of water to coax its approximately 17 hands high horse size down my fiber optic size throat. I could dissolve it or break it into two or more pieces. But I have a stubborn streak. I will not let this devil pill best me.

I take it with all the finesse of what it might look like if I were to go, say skydiving. I just jump right out there and do it. No honey, no wimping out to dissolve or break it up. Nope just step up to the edge of the airplane door, uh counter, throw my head back and hope for the best.

Trina Machacek lives in Eureka. Her new book They Call Me Weener is available on Amazon.com. Or get a signed copy by emailing her at itybytrina@yahoo.com.