The gag reflex

So I've been reading this whole foods book that the acu recommended, in order to try to get my diet the healthiest it can possibly be. And one thing that I'm going to try is to have spirulina and chlorella in order to get lots of protein and chlorophyll and other good things. These are both algae, by the way and typically come in powders or tablets. Well, I've taken spirulina before over the years - I've tried the powder mixed into tea, but it doesn't mix terribly well so it's somewhat difficult to take. I had some tablets left over from somewhere - the last IVF maybe or the one before that? So I started taking them. Then I bought some chlorella tablets on Friday and had those on Friday night. All well and good. But the whole foods book recommends either taking them as powders or chewing the tablets first in order that the tablets don't pass through your system undigested. Which is an issue apparently. Or, it said, if you really can't face the idea of chewing the tablets, you can dissolve them in water for an hour before swallowing. Yesterday, therefore, I tried dissolving them in water. I actually left it a couple of hours, and kept mixing and tried crushing with a spoon. But by the time I went to drink it, two spirulina tablets were still stuck to the bottom of the glass. Pretty much undissolved. The others I had managed to swallow with the rest of the water.

No problem, I thought, they just didn't dissolve because they were stuck to the bottom - they didn't mix properly. I'll add more water and keep trying, I thought. I swirled, I mixed, I poked and prodded. Over the day I kept drinking off the water and trying to dissolve the remainder of the tablets. But by late last night the water was bright blue rather than green and the little buggers were still there. I left it overnight to see what would happen. More bright blue water, and partially undissolved tablets. I left these for 24 hours and they still didn't dissolve! Now, of course, this is water, not stomach acid, but still. It didn't bode well for full digestion.

Being the adventurous type, I therefore decided this morning to try chewing the tablets as suggested in the book. Oh my god. It was traumatic to say the least. I started with the spirulina. As I'd had the powdered stuff before I was prepared for the taste. However the texture was like clay. So I dutifully chewed, swilled some water around my mouth and swallowed. And then spent a few minutes picking green sludge from my teeth and swallowing yet more water. And trying not to gag. But I made it. I survived. Then came the chlorella. It was like an explosion of grass flavored mud happened in my mouth. I gagged a bit. Realizing I could never actually chew it, I took a gulp of water to try to swallow it all. I gagged some more. Getting worried now that everything would come spewing out of me in a green colored sludgy fountain, I tried to clear the stuff that was now caking my teeth. I gagged again. And again. And again. It was naaasty. So I rushed to the bathroom, and tried to just rinse my mouth out to get some of the sludge out. I rinsed, and rinsed, and gagged, and gagged. I have no idea how I managed to prevent myself from vomiting but I did. Finally I had some more water, and went and lay on the sofa, panting.

Not exactly the best start to the day. Sometimes I wonder if I ever manage to have a kid if they'll have any idea of the sometimes ridiculous things I did to try to get there. And then wonder if I'll hold it over their heads when they do something bad like my own mother used to do with her own 36-hour labor with me ("we were going to have 3 children until you came along but it was so awful I said never again"). And then just to add icing to the green sludge cake, I did some googling on another subject entirely and realized that the acu probably isn't interested in me at all. So that's put a damper on that little crush. Dagnammit.