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| This is what my morning hair looks like. |
I'm half asleep until I get to my desk and usually I eat my morning snack in the car and the energy burst from the food wakes me up.
This morning, I grab an apricot out of the fruit bowl as my morning snack. I'm at a red light and I pull out the pit and pop the remaining piece in my mouth.
Instantly I start violently coughing as something really hard and sharp hacks its way down my throat. A bitter taste settles down in the back of my mouth and instantly I thought, I'm going to die choking at this red light in my car!
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| For once Prof. Plum didn't do it! It was the apricot. |
The food made its way painfully into my belly and then I turned on the interior lights of my car to check out that pit I just pulled out a moment before. It was resting on top of a coffee cup lid in my center console (I don't like to litter).
I was surprised because in the dark pre-5 a.m. hour, I thought I had taken out the whole pit, but now that I held it in my hands, I can see that the shell is broken and I had only pulled out half of it.
The remaining bit was lodged into the apricot blob that choked me.
Uh oh.
I think apricot pits have cyanide in them. Oh-my-god-oh-my-god-oh-my-god.
I thought really hard to try to identify where I had gotten that information from. I traced it back to childhood where I vaguely remember my dad telling me that apple, apricot, plum, and peach pits have cyanide in them. He probably told us this because as kids we were always eating the wild fruit that came from my grandfather's trees.
And of course I know that cyanide's poisonous.
If I die people will think I was poisoned! I was thinking. I have to tell someone about this.
The light had been green for a while and I took off and headed to work.
On the drive in, I tried to monitor myself for warning signs of impending death but I seemed alright.
I sat down at my desk and started Googling things like "Are apricot pits toxic?"; "cyanide in apricot pits"; and "cyanide poisoning symptoms."
Anyone privy to my browsing history would suspect me of planning a murder.
Anyway what I found was kind of shocking.
First off, I visited the FDA and found that the apricot pit kernels are listed on their "Poisonous plant database." I saw that and started to get sweaty. Or is the sweatiness a symptom?! Now I was just panicking.
Apparently yes there is a compound inside apricot pits that can manifest itself as cyanide in the human digestive system but it seems that you'd have to eat a lot of them for it to have any kind of effect.
Also, it seems that some places in Mexico are using an apricot pit therapy as a cancer treatment. Cool! Wikipedia informs me that apricot kernels are featured in some recipes. So at least it won't kill me.
I texted my boyfriend telling him what happened.
"Maybe you should write a blog post about your hypochondria," was his response.
Hypochondria?! What hypochondria? I'm not a hypochondriac? I thought. I really DID swallow an apricot pit.
"I'm not a hypochondriac," I texted him back, "If I was then I'd be convinced that I was a hypochondriac."
"No, they deny that usually I think," was his response.
I definitely wasn't but I pulled it up on WebMd.com just to be sure. Then I dismissed his diagnosis because I clearly don't have those symptoms.
However, at 9 a.m. on the dot I called my primary physician. They don't really know me over there because I only visit if I'm on the verge of death and that happens less than once a year.
A secretary answered and I opened with, "Hi, my name's Leanne and I'm a patient at your office."
She greeted me and asked me how she could help me.
"I think I accidentally poisoned myself because I swallowed an apricot pit this morning at about 4:30 a.m." I told her. "And there's cyanide in the pits. And a Google article I read says there's approximately half a milligram of cyanide in an apricot kernel."
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| "Orange you glad you didn't eat me?" |
"Ok," she answered calmly. "Let me go talk to the doctor, hold on."
Right then it occurred to me that I should actually be calling the poison control center.
She came back on the line, "The doctor says you'll be fine, just don't eat anymore of them. Also, call us if you have trouble digesting the pit or if your bowel movement causes you significant discomfort."
She gives me an emergency pager number (people still have pagers?) to call if I need it for after hours.
I thank her and hang up relieved.
Tomorrow I'm switching back to Pop Tarts.