The secret to not tasting saline flushes
I hate the taste of Saline. “It’ll taste like Pennies,” they said. “It’s like salt-water,” they promised.
It tastes more like bullshit.
My Mom’s name is Penny and I grew up on the beach. I love Pennies and I like saltwater. Saline is none of those things.
If you’ve ever found yourself on the receiving end of a chemo bag, you know that you tend to have a good amount of Saline pumped through your veins in a given week. For some, the warm fluid is a welcome respite from the various drugs and dyes that have been thrust into your arms or chest. For others, like myself, it means a sharp dive for a toilet and a Listerine tab. (I swear those things stick to the roof of your mouth worse than peanut butter…)
It didn’t matter how the Saline is administered. Through the arm, directly into my PowerPort (which I will be referring to as my PartyPort from here on out…), in a shot glass (surprisingly, they never give me the option to have it administered this way, but a lady can dream…), it made no difference whatsoever.
The stale-plastic taste of the sterile fluid wrapped around the back of my tongue and shot down my throat, hitting my stomach sideways. It’s as if someone walked through the hospital, collecting all of the various smells, sights, frustration, fear, and hope that congregate throughout the halls and bottled it for injection.
I didn’t always have a hate-hate relationship with the liquid that ensures all tubing (both implanted and natural) is clear of any lingering drugs. There’s not exactly a guidebook for how the various elements of Cancer treatment will affect you, but I really didn’t anticipate something so innocent as Saline could be the root of so much anxiety.
Though the realization that I could taste something that was being injected into my chest or arm was fascinating, it was also a discovery that left me with little hope. Would I ever get through a routine port-flush without gagging?
The answer was yes…yes we would.
For those out there like myself, who have burned many a bridge with various gums, candies (R.I.P. Werthers. You were added to the Chemo-rotation far too soon…), and whatever else we could snag from the snack cart in an attempt to mask the seemingly innocuous taste of the Clear-Vixen known as Saline, I’m about to introduce you to the world of the Nursing-Station’s “Secret Menu.”
(It may not be super secret, but I went through 8 months of chemo before someone told me about this…Plus, I like to think of Chemo like an In-and-Out Burger or Capitalism, so many possibilities for you if you have a decent wifi plan and know who to wink at…)
So how did I do it? Well hold on to your catheters and cold-caps because here comes the ground-breaking revelation everyone has been asking me about:
more saline.
That’s right. The secret to not tasting the burning-plastic Saline was to ask for different Saline…
There are two kinds of Saline nursing stations have: The pre-loaded syringes that Nurses have at the ready and these small “Secret-Menu” bottles that don’t have the chemical/plastic taste of the aforementioned syringes. It took a Nurse whose profound interest in her patient’s well-being outweighed any sense of hurry for me to learn about these magical bottles of briny elixir.
I mention the Nurse’s lack of hurry because these bottles will require someone to draw the Saline into the syringe, so if you are tight on time it may take them a moment to track down the Saline and do the deed. Plus some Nurses may not know what you are talking about…Remember though, at the end of the day you are the Client.
Now, there is a fine=line between being a pain-in-the-ass and making what is arguably one of Life’s more passive-aggressive lemons a bit less bitter of a bite. So if you ever get nervous asking your Nurse about this, just picture me in the chair next to you ordering the same cocktail, because I probably am.
If your Cancer Center does not have the bottled-Saline at the ready, my second tip for you is this:
Chew on lemons.
I had blown through gum, various candies, chips, drinks, you name it, in an attempt to mask the Saline flush during my first Cancer Treatment. It didn’t matter what I tried or how I varied my timing, I would end up clinging to some receptacle with all my might. If I clutched the trashcan a bit tighter maybe my stomach would cooperate…
Eventually though, my Mom suggested I try biting into a lemon.(Mama Penny is the best…)
The insanely tart nature of the citrus numbed my tongue and my brain to the hyper-fixated awareness of Saline’s trigger warning of sickness to come. For the mere cost of $3 for a bag of lemons and my pride as I sat, drooling and spitting empty rinds into an Emesis bag, I was able to prevent myself from using the barf bag for its original intent. (I guess I just preferred to use the bags on my own terms…)
Nurses came to know me as the Lemon Girl. Some cringed and others laughed as they waited to inject me until I had the lemon at the ready. Then, as they counted down from three, I would bite down with all my might as they plunged the warm serum into my body.
They would roll their eyes as I rolled up my sleeves to fight through this battle with as much independence as I could. And it started with lemons.