Supplemental Health Care

One of the many things I’m looking forward to about not being pregnant—I mean, besides not having a person taking up the space where my intestines rightfully belong, not not having sex, and not feeling like a beached whale with varicose veins—is not having to pop quite so many pills every day. My current daily regimen consists of 19 pills: 2 prenatal vitamins, 1 vitamin D (to make up for the lack of sun in Seattle), 3 ferrous gluconate (to make up for the lack of liver in my diet), 3 ferrous sulfate (to make up for the lack of iron shavings in my diet), 2 stool softeners (to help out with the issue caused by ingesting 276 mg of iron every day (for reference, a 3 oz steak contains 3 mg)), 1 vitamin C to help out with iron absorption, 4 Zantac for indigestion, and 3 Acyclovir for cooties given to me by a boy seven years ago right before he got deported back to Canada. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could just stuff all 19 pills down my gullet at once, but the Acyclovir, Zantac, and iron supplements have to be spaced out throughout the day—and the iron can’t be taken with the Zantac or the prenatals or any dairy products or on an empty stomach, unless I want to see the iron pills again and in a less, shall we say, compact form.

If I don’t start popping pills the second I wake up (first a Zantac, then wait an hour for the Zantac to kick in so I can properly digest some non-dairy-containing foodstuff with which to take the first of the iron doses), I can’t fit all the pills into the day. And I have to say, planning my day around a bunch of dietary supplements is pretty damn boring. As you can see.