It Turns Out I'm NOT Dying After All...

Ok, you guys, seriously, I've been a bit worried the last few days. For about 3 days now (this is the 4th day), I've had this horribly bitter taste in the back of my mouth after I eat or drink something. It's not there all the time, just when I'm eating and after I eat. At first I thought it was the new vitamins I was taking and I blew it off. The next morning though, my coffee tasted terribly bitter and I hadn't taken the vitamins yet. So, I was all, "hmmm, what's up with that?" Later, at work, I ate a container of yogurt. Well, that's not entirely true. I TRIED to eat the yogurt, but it was so freakin' nasty tasting I threw it away after 3 bites. I ate some blueberries instead. You should know, I love blueberries above all foods, with the possible exception of sweet potatoes, (FINE and ice cream. Shut-up, I'm pretending I'm healthy!) and they were disgusting and gross. I couldn't eat them. This made me super frowny because I LOVE them, but also because it's not blueberry season and those fuckers are expensive!

I'm trying to figure out why I have this awful taste in my mouth/throat and I made a comment to one of my hypochondriac co-workers. His reply - "Dude, sounds like you're having some liver problems." WHAT? What the fuckingwhatwhat? You're so not helpful!

And then, of course, now I'm all worried that I'm having some sort of liver problem. I keep looking in the mirror to see if my eyes are turning yellow or if my skin looks jaundiced. I'm not a doctor, but I've watched 'House' a lot, so I think I'm pretty qualified to make a diagnosis. Obviously.

Last night, I'm just going crazy because now ice cream tastes bad, too. HOW CAN THIS BE? Ice cream is a gift from the Godtopus; there's no way in hell it should ever taste bad. Unless you're dying. Now I'm getting concerned. Because first of all, I did A LOT of drugs in the 90's. It's entirely possible that I damaged my liver. But secondly and more importantly, if I'm dying, but ice cream and blueberries are going to taste bad up until my death, then fuck it, bring it on now. I'm not gonna' put up with that kind of asshattery nonsense until my inevitable demise. That's just crazy talk and I'm not a big enough trooper to go through that. I know my limitations.

Of course, I turned to the internet because you pretty much always want to self-diagnose major organ failure via the internet. So, I typed in the search words, "bitter taste in mouth when eating". The first few links to pop up -

Liver failure.
Super.

Brain tumor.
AWE-some.

Kidney disease.
Neato Bandito.

But wait, there was something else.

Bitter taste - pine nuts?

Hmmmm, interesting. I clicky the linky and there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people all over the world describing what I'm experiencing and all of them have one thing in common - pine nuts. And guess what I've been eating on everything I can get my fat little hands on? Guess! Wow, you kids are super good at this game - you're right! Pine nuts. I've been eating them in my hummus, on pizza, in my pasta salad, mixed with other nuts, and a handful here and there on their own.

According to the other people who are also not dying of liver failure, a couple of days after eating pine nuts, they have a bitter/metallic taste in the back of their mouths, like a dissolving aspirin taste, which keeps appearing when they eat. Nothing seems to make it much better and sweet things seem to make it much worse. Some of them have reported it to their doctors and the doctors have never heard of it and there's only one published medical article about it. But, Wikipedia has something about it, so that's something, I guess. It doesn't happen to everyone and the only semi-common link is that a lot of the pine nuts are from China, but there's no definitive answer as to why. Why it only affects some people and why it only happens sometimes.

Anyway, evidently for another week or two I'll have this yummy taste, which is kind of similar to what it would taste like if you brushed your teeth and then followed it with a big ol' honkin' glass of cranberry juice. Mmm mmm, good, right?

I just thought you'd all be thrilled to know that I'm not actually dying and some pine nuts are evil.

I'm probably still going to keep trying ice cream. It's for SCIENCE, ok? Geez.