Saline...ick!

So since today is a rather grey and otherwise yucky day I thought I’d talk about a yucky topic…saline. Ahh yes…saline my nemesis. “What’s wrong with saline” you ask, “isn’t it just salt water?”

Yes. It is just salt water…which I normally am a fan of. I use salt water to gargle with when I have a cold. I’m quite fond of the salt water that you find at the beach. I like salt water fish. I even like salt water taffy. However, the kind of “salt water” saline that they pump directly into your veins via an IV, port, or other mode of entry, tastes like garlic. It actually tastes like nasty, been sitting in a tin can for four months, starting to go bad garlic.

It’s usually not so bad if they are just flushing your port with a few CC’s of the stuff. But when your port won’t allow them to draw blood from it they apparently have to use 6-8 syringes full of the nasty stuff to flush it. So you go from tasting garlic at 7:45 in the morning for just a few moments…to tasting it for several minutes. N-A-S-T-Y. Seriously nasty.

So what do you do for that? I have found that chewing cinnamon gum works best. Don’t bother with minty gum. It doesn’t work. What you really need is the tongue-numbing over powering cinnamon gum. I’m a fan of Trident. It numbs your tongue up real nice.

I’ve also found that coffee works good. You need something with a good, strong, flavor. Don’t worry about the smell…you don’t smell garlic you just taste it since it’s going directly into your veins. A good stout cup of Starbucks coffee works wonders.

Do not make the mistake though, of thinking that a Chai Latte from Starbucks will work by combining the cinnamon flavor with a beverage. That doesn’t work and really just propels you directly into the nausea realm.

Actually…just blogging about this is making me nauseated. Ewww….