Somewhere along the line the no-pills directive must have broken down, since I found myself trying to swallow 2 large Tylenol capsules at 5:00 AM this morning. They were pre-meds for my next blood transfusion, and there was no time for me to kick up a fuss and have them switched to liquid form, so I popped them in and spent the next half hour (no exaggeration) trying to down, dissolve, dislodge, or, failing that, disgorge them. They just wouldn’t be washed down my dry-as-dust gullet by water, and for a while there it seemed like I was going to have to breathe through my nose, since they were somehow pinching my windpipe in addition to rubbing my esophagus raw. It was fortunate that my nurse managed to suction enough of them out so that I could finally gag down the rest, since a few minutes later I ingested just enough pectin-laced vanilla yogurt to make breathing though my nose impossible for another half-hour or so. I have long had a mild allergy to things like apple skins, due to their pectin, but I never imagined that this reaction would ensue from a single spoonful of vanilla yoghurt. The Tylenol problem was perhaps foreseeable, but the Wallaby Yoghurt company’s decision to include that particular allergen in their otherwise normal-looking product struck me as somewhat perverse. Anyway, some Benadryl (in pill form) solved the problem and I felt like a new cancer patient once again. That is, until they brought the liquid Colace, which tasted like a Drano-laced version of the thing it is supposed to soften, and made me feel more or less like the same substance. All this before noon! I’m hoping the afternoon will improve, because I’m on a pretty god-awful trajectory otherwise. On the plus side (?), I just learned that the Tylenol isn’t even considered a necessary pre-med for blood transfusions after all; they were just erring on the side of caution when they gave it to me in horse pill size form. Now they tell me…