On Tuesday, I went to the dentist to get my tooth implant recemented, its having worked itself loose within 3 weeks of the last time I got it recemented, but only now reached the stage where it was in danger of breaking its moorings entirely and getting swallowed. It was caused by something horrible forming about a piece of debris that had been left in from some earlier work, which my immune system had discovered and decided to surround in a capsule of pus. The pus oozed out, attacked the cement and caused the tooth to come loose.
Sorry, you weren't eating when you read that, were you?
Anyway, the dentist gave me some antibiotics to put an end to the pus problem. Normally, dentist antibiotics are fairly innocuous medications, which do reduce infections but don't always get rid of them. They also make your wee smell funny. This time, though, the dentist gave me a different kind of antibiotic: Metronidazole.
This is one of the worst-tasting concoctions I have ever had the misfortune to place in my mouth; like an Actifed, only stronger. Not only does it taste bad, it lingers: one passing glance off the tongue as you swallow a tablet and you'll be tasting it for the next 30 minutes in all its metallic glory. If it actually lands on the tongue, you can feel it fizzing as it bonds its vile presence to your flesh. It's not just the tongue, either — I could taste it on the roof of my mouth and in my cheeks, too — places I didn't know I had tastebuds. I could put a pill underneath my tongue and not taste it, but the idea was to swallow it. I'm generally good at taking pills, but this one had to be taken with water, which meant unless I managed to get it first go it would land smack in the middle of my tongue and attempt to kill me. On one occasion, it flipped in the water and slid down my whole tongue. Augh!
It didn't finish there, either. An hour or so after taking one, I got a different nasty taste in my mouth. This is a known side-effect according to the instruction sheet, but apparently not known enough that they can make it taste of strawberries. Furthermore, I have a permanent feeling that I'm hungry, even when I know I'm not because I'm coming to the end of eating a large meal.
Thankfully, I took the last one just now. I don't know if it successfully attacked the bacteria it was supposed to be targeting, but it did a good job on making me feel ill so hopefully they fared worse.