Medication Can Suck It…And Here’s Why
Posted on May 12, 2011
The grocery shopping is done, dinner is finished, the dishwasher is running, the shower was nice and hot and I’ve got episodes of Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot playing on the TV. Life is good. I did have to take a Benadryl, though. Stupid allergies kicked in. And that got me to thinking about my run-ins with medication throughout the years. It hasn’t been pretty. Oh, no. Not even close.
I had allergies as a kid that went undiagnosed until I was 8. That meant I had bronchitis every year, ear infections and all sorts of other things I fortunately can’t remember. This was, mind you, apparently before the invention of medication in pill form. Why do I say this? Because I had take the worst tasting f***ing liquid medication I’ve ever had the displeasure of putting in my mouth and you wouldn’t believe what I’ve put in my mouth! Penicillin, Amoxicillin, Ampicillin…it all tastes like shit.
Taking all of that is probably what turned me off of ever taking medication unless I absolutely had to. I did come down sick in college from time to time and I’d usually want the strongest over-the-counter medicine I could find. That turned out to be Thera-Flu. Only that not only tasted awful–not as awful as the penicillin, which, incidentally, my mother used to add to split pea soup for me as a kid despite the fact I could taste the shit anyway–but it also made me paranoid if I took it before bed. I became a sweating inferno laying down and kept thinking my roommates had done something to make me that way. They didn’t. It was the medication.
Ralph soon discovered how much Benadryl messes with me and took advantage of it whenever I was getting too grouchy for him. Yes, I get grouchy when I’m sick. I also get grouchy when he does that thing he refers to as driving. Being ill and thinking I’m going to die because of his questionable expertise behind the wheel somehow equals him giving me Benadryl to shut me up. It works.
Then there was Philadelphia. I had a headache while visiting him and thought I was taking a couple Tylenol tablets. No, no. I’d mixed some Zyrtec tablets in there and managed to down two of those without realizing it. I don’t remember much of that evening and I suspect it’s fortunate. Ralph enjoyed it and swore that being comatose was one of my positive personality traits.
Now, a year ago just before I was going to lose my health insurance, I decided to take care of a little something that had been bothering me for a couple of years. I had funky nail or two on one foot, so I went to see the doctor. He prescribed something for me that I’d have to take for several months, but would take care of the problem. And it worked for several days, right up until I broke out in a rash all over my body.
Five days of steroids later, I started on a second medication that would do the same thing. Guess what? It didn’t give me a rash! Instead, it gave me a yeast infection. A friggin’ yeast infection! I didn’t know guys could get yeast infections. Ralph came home and asked why there was a tube of Monistat cream in the bathroom. Do you think I wanted to tell him why? Noooooo. And my suspicions were confirmed when he started laughing out loud and mumbling “My husband has a yeast infection!” And he wondered why I didn’t tell him I’d gotten Botox several years ago.
As much as I know what medication does to me, I was shocked as hell to find out this past weekend that a friend of mine has been doing a little medicinal weed from time to time. I never would have guessed. The irony is that while I never noticed it with him, one of our other friends acts like he was raised on the stuff since we can never get him to shut up!
I don’t suppose any of you have a couple of tales of medication gone awry? I mean…it’s only fair.
Big hugs,
Kris
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Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.
3 Responses to “Medication Can Suck It…And Here’s Why”
Dorien Grey says:
May 12, 2011 at 11:01 am
Another classic. Thanks for the laughs.
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Kris says:
May 12, 2011 at 7:29 pm
Thank you, Mr. Grey, for the kind words. =) It means a great deal to me to hear from a writer of your stature.
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Ket Makkura says:
May 13, 2011 at 12:38 am
For the record, a yeast infection is the same thing as jock itch. Guys get yeast infections; just with a less disgusting name.
I’ve taken a lot of medication over my lifetime, so it mostly doesn’t bother me. However, Vicodin can make me vomit like Linda Blair if I don’t eat first. My friend took Advil Cold and Sinus and it made her hallucinate that she was slogging through a river of blood.
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