Citric Nightmare
I am anti-citrus.
I hate it when I go to a bar, order my Diet Pepsi and some jumped up bar keep hurls a lemon or lime wedge in there with abandon. How about you ask me before you taint, what would have been, a thirst quenching, refreshing beverage with a chunk of sour, lip-pursing citric acid?
But my least favorite of the citrus family? The orange.
This is not a socially friendly food. People who eat them in public make me sick. I hate oranges in any form; as is, as a garnish, or as a juice. If I even see the words ‘orange juice with pulp’ on a juice carton, I have a full body dry heave. (In fact, just typing the word ‘pulp’ made me throw up in my mouth a little).
I had never eaten an orange. The smell alone is enough to make me gag. If someone is eating one near me, I have to move. I would never even touch one; forget putting one in my mouth.
But all that changed in the spring of ’07.
Ahh, what a spring it was. Jobless, broke and in desperate need of a trip to New York, I needed to make money fast. I weighed up my options, ruled out drug dealing, car jacking and prostitution and went to the obvious fourth choice; a medical research trial.
I got on to the study, which involved me staying over at this facility three weekends in a row, taking a couple of pills and having almost every last drop of blood in my body drawn out of me.
I arrive on a Saturday evening and get acquainted with the 50 other people on the study.
Sunday morning, I get ready for breakfast. Each person has a number and has to eat at a specific time. I wait for my number to be called and go into the dining room.
As I walk in, I’m told I have to eat100% of what’s on the tray.
I sit down and the tray is placed in front of me. A bowl of cornflakes, some apple juice and…an orange. I zone in on the orange and the psycho music plays in my head.
I grab the clinic staff. “Can I get something else? I can’t eat oranges.”
“No.”
“Please? Any other fruit?”
“No, You have to eat that. You have 25 minutes to finish everything.”
Great. Now I’m against the clock.
I try not to think about it while I munch on the cornflakes and gulp down the juice. That’s done in 5 minutes. I have 20 minutes to tackle the citric nightmare.
I grab hold of it and my heart starts racing, hands shaking. Even peeling it was making my stomach flip. I was discreetly asking people at my table if they would eat it for me. But if we got caught, we’d all be off the study and I needed to go to New York damnit!
I finally get through peeling the thing and someone says: “watch out for the seeds.”
Oranges have seeds?! Jesus. What does the orange think it is? I have to peel it, get all that stringy white shit off it, break it up into pieces AND contend with seeds?
My eyes started to well up. I threw the first piece of orange into my mouth and my gag reflex had a party. I put my hand over my mouth, chewed and forced myself to swallow. I choked back the tears. This was embarrassing enough without me crying. I didn’t want to be known as ‘the crazy orange girl’ but it was pretty much too late for that now anyway.
My whole body was shaking as I forced down wedge after God forsaken wedge.
Now people were noticing how hard this was for me and were giving me words of encouragement. “You can do it! You’re almost there!”
It was like one of those weird Japanese TV shows where they force you to eat and drink till you throw up, then you have to do an assault course or something.
The clinic assistant stood over me with her hairnet, white coat and a stopwatch saying; “You have four minutes left. You’re doing a great job.”
She’s lucky I had a mouthful, or the tirade that would’ve come out of my mouth would have got me kicked off for sure.
I finally finished the last piece with about 45 seconds to spare. I sat with a napkin over my mouth for a couple of minutes hoping I wouldn’t ‘refund’ (as George Costanza puts it).
They don’t let you go to the bathroom afterwards (which was probably good idea in my case and there would have been refunds, exchanges, gift vouchers and credit notes), but I needed to wash my hands. If I had the smell of oranges on my mitts all day, my stomach would definitely not cooperate with the program.
I asked to use the bathroom and was denied. They offered me wet wipes.
“Wet wipes won’t do it! I need soap!” I screeched, a little more emotional than I’d intended. Everyone looked at me as though I might lash out at any minute and a clinic assistant slowly unlocked the bathroom door.
I got in there, washed my hands like I had OCD and spent the rest of the day feeling nauseous.
Week two was even worse than week one and by week three my every waking moment was consumed with the thought of having to eat that orange. I only had to get through one more, then I’d get a nice fat cheque and be on the next plane to New York, but I just didn’t think I could do it.
I was trying meditation, breathing exercises, crosswords to keep my mind off it, nothing worked.
Then my dad suggested I try hypnosis. So I went for a consultation. This guy spent half an hour explaining the process and how it’ll work for me. Then he told me it was $100 a session and I’d need at least five for it to work. I think the price quote cured me.
I said to myself ‘suck it up and deal with it bitch’.
By the time I got to the clinic that weekend, I had my game face on. I ate the orange in a record 18 minutes and only felt like I was going to hurl for four hours after that. That’s what I call results.
The trip to New York was awesome.
I’ll never go near another orange as long as I live.
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Tags: dry heaving, oranges
