Pills 💊

Every time I discuss matters relating to RODA(route of drugs administration) with my family and friends, I make sure that I emphasize my dissatisfaction with injections.

My mother would always tell me that injection is the best way to receive treatment to see the results as fast as possible but I always stood my ground to counter her with my own opinion about it plus giving points to prove why I prefer pills.

It's not like injections are bad or they don’t work, I just find them very uncomfortable because of no other reason than the mild pain it gives when piercing the skin as well as the fear of complications which rarely occur.

All the times that I countered my mother in the past, she would say “pray that we do not get illness that will leave us with no option than to take injections” but I’d smile and shudder it off like it’s none of my business.

However, sometime around 2010, I became ill for days. My condition was a little serious because I couldn’t sustain food in my stomach. Whatever goes in through my mouth would always find its way back almost immediately so, there was no time for the food to get absorbed in my system talk less of the drugs that I took with the food.

Whenever I take the medicine in, I just throw up. It was like reflex action.
It continued that way until a nurse arrived and explained how to go about it to us. I was left with no choice than to take injections.

I became very sad but what choice do I have?

I was taken to the clinic where I received injections and after that I began to feel better and I could eat without throwing up.
After that particular period, my parents thought I could chest the pain of injections since I eventually took it the last time.

A few years later, I was down with malaria (not critical) and my aunt who just got her nursing license at that time suggested that I take injections to speed up my recovery.

I disagreed with everything in me that day. She and my mother made plans to lure me into the room so that I could be trapped and as such make me take the injections.

I knew of their plans before they tried to execute it. In fact, when she made an attempt to force me to stay in the room with her, I fled and didn’t return home till she was gone at night.

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When I eventually got back home that night, I took antimalarial pills and went to bed.

On the third day that I was supposed to finish my medications, I felt like a superwoman because I was not even feeling sick again, I just had to complete my dose.

However, my mother prepared pounded yam and okra soup before I got back home. So all I needed to do was to eat my food and use my medicine afterwards.

Something came over me that day and I decided to explore a new way of taking my oral drugs.

Instead of the conventional way of placing medicines in the mouth and swallowing it with a drink or rather putting drink in the mouth and placing medicines in it before swallowing, in my own case, I made a bolus from my pounded yam and placed my own medicine in the middle.

I covered it so well that no part of the medicine was exposed from the bolus. I then rolled it in my soup and swallowed it.

Moreover, the essence of doing that was to hide the bitter taste associated with placing medicine directly in the mouth.
I used that method for the first and second pill and was successful.

So I was left with a single pill – a capsule this time around.

I excused myself and went to the kitchen to get clean drinking water.

By the time I got back, I’d forgotten that I placed a pill in my bolus before I left.
I just threw my already made bolus in my mouth and chewed. The first two chews I placed on the bolus, my goodness!! I almost cried.

I knew exactly what the word bitter meant that day.

I couldn’t even swallow it again. I had to hurry to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my mouth over and over again.
I couldn’t even finish my food.

In fact I couldn’t take pills for so long and it took me a long time to recover from that nightmare.

Gentlemen and ladies, since then , I don’t place pills in my food again.

These days, I take my time to eat and then take my pills afterwards.

Let me ask you a question now..
How do you take your pills?