triggered!

I have an incredibly, abnormally sensitive gag reflex; I've only ever known one other person who had a worse one, and hers was so bad she had a prescription for muscle relaxers to control it and needed to be sedated at the dentist. Mine isn't quite that bad, but it's still pretty bad. It responds to physical prodding, sticking something down your throat, like everyone else's--but it doesn't take a lot, and it's really hard for me to hold it in if it's set off. Those throat swabs at the doctor's office were a nightmare for me since I inevitably fought like hell and then puked immediately on contact. Sometimes on the doctor. It got so bad that my mom used to have to promise me $5 a go if I managed not to puke. I don't do that anymore, but only because I'm better at not throwing up when my body wants to all the time--not because my gag reflex has improved.

Like other people, my reflex is triggered by other things as well--certain smells, the textures of certain things in the mouth, the sight of things like slimy bugs that I find visibly repulsive. It also gets triggered by the tastes of certain things, though this seems to largely have abated as I've gotten older. The thing that gave me the worst trouble trying to stomach when I was a kid?

Tylenol.

Children's cold remedies almost always seem to have the same chemically, furniture-polish-esque cherry flavouring that I could never, ever manage. I just couldn't stand that taste when I was a kid. Taking medicine was another battle for me and my parents--not only did I know it was going to taste awful and I was going to get sick, I knew I'd also be in trouble for it because my parents invariably blamed me whenever something went wrong. They thought I was throwing up on purpose for attention.

There are no words adequate to convey just how violently repulsed I was by cherry cough medicine. To this day, anything that smells remotely like that--including cherry sodas--makes me want to hurl. I hated it so much and was so desperate not to have to go through it ever again that I actually learned how to swallow pills whole like adults when I was eight years old.

Yeah. I've spent 75% of my life taking adult medication because I had such a sensitive gag reflex that the taste of the 'kiddie' stuff made me vomit uncontrollably.

It comes with perks though. It means I almost never bitch at the pharmacy that the pills are too big for me to swallow. And it also means that when I have to take multiple medication or a large dose, I can bang down a fistful of pills in one go without much of a problem. And I can dry-swallow, but I hate doing that because it feels weird.

Also, it's probably pretty fortunate that the boything doesn't like blowjobs. If he wanted me to do it and I tried, it would probably end in me getting immediately and spectacularly sick all over his junk. Which I'm pretty sure would have put him off blowjobs for a while anyway.