I Did It!....Sorta...

If going to Africa in and of itself is not an adventure....swallowing my first pill certainly was. In my last blog entry, I mentioned how I had never swallowed a pill before...well, right now, I have one of THESE babies floating around inside my stomach! This is what the Doctors call Doxycycline, a drug that is (hopefully) going to keep me from contracting malaria. It is essentially an antibiotic that is used against all kinds of things, but I don't want to bore you with the details of the drug. What you really want to know about is how it got down my throat....

Well, it wasn't easy, I'll tell you that much. I went out to eat at a Cuban Restaurant tonight with my aunt and I told myself I was going to take it during dinner. I even told the waitress I couldn't eat any dairy products with my meal since it wouldn't settle well with the pill. As I took the pill out, I was intimidated by its size, plus, I realized that I had eaten butter during dinner and I didn't want to know what would happen when Dairy met Doxycycline (I think the result also starts with a D....Diarrhea). So I gave up and decided that I would just do it when I got home.

Take 2: Got home and immediately wanted to get it over with. Went to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of H2O and told myself "You WILL do this, Will!" (lol) My siblings (ages 11 and 12) were mocking me saying, "Come on, Willy, you're 22 and can't swallow a pill"!? My brother even swallowed a bean to prove to me that it was 'effortless'. I went to a little corner where no one would see me, so I could have alone time to accomplish my feat. Just me and the blue pill.

Put it in my mouth, drank nearly half the bottle of water and....nothing. The pill was still there on my tongue as if it hadn't moved one inch. UGH! "Why is this so hard!?" I realized that I couldn't be the only one in this world who has this difficulty, so I went to none other than YouTube. I figured someone had to have posted something. I immediately found this video and connected with the guy. He said he learned to swallow pills when he was 21 and I am 22. He described EXACTLY what it felt like when the pill would just float around in the water and not go down. I knew this was the start to my answer. He essentially gave 4 easy steps:

1. Go to the mirror and open your mouth real wide to show yourself how much room the pill has to go down.
2. Place the pill at the back of your mouth (which is further than where you think it is)...this was SO true for me, I was putting it essentially at the front of my mouth
3. close your mouth and let your tongue fall back into your throat (with the pill)
4. Drink Water if you start to choke

Even though I had outlined the steps over in my head, I still wanted to find a way out of actually swallowing the pill. Some of my friends told me I could just uncap it and mix the powder with water. I really wanted to do this, but after researching it a bit, I decided that they put the damn coat on the pill for a reason and I should just go for it. So I ran to the restroom, opened up my mouth REAL wide and said, yup, the pill can definitely fit down there (Step 1). Put the pill further back in my throat (Step 2) and simply closed my mouth (Step 3). It wasn't exactly how the guy in the video said it would be. Although the pill kinda fell into the place at the back of my throat, I gagged it back up and it was in that same position in the middle of my mouth. I was determined to get this pill down, so I pushed it back again and gave it another shot. Same result.

At this point, I had to act fast. My saliva was starting to melt the coat and I was starting to taste the inside. I had already thrown one failed pill away and I was not going to waste another. I pushed the pill back with my tongue, swallowed a gulp of water and...voilà! It was gone and I could only assume that it went down my throat. I don't know whether I can call it all a success, but I'm one step closer to being able to actually swallow pills! :)

Down to just about my last 30 hours in California. Tomorrow is going to be a long day. But now that I feel a bit more protected against Malaria...I'm ready to start my summer in Kigali :)