Taking Your Medicine

Posted on May 25, 2013 under Storytelling with one comment

Our society is obsessed with privacy and confidentiality.  Almost everywhere we go these days, it seems someone wants to check our I.D.’s.  Financial institutions are the worst.  If you happen to show up at the teller window with a wad of cash, they immediately suspect you are part of a money laundering operation and want two I.D’s , along with a blood sample.  I could have saved them the trouble.  I found a crumpled up five dollar bill in the dryer the other day.  That’s how I launder my money.

While I respect the notions of privacy and confidentiality, it is increasingly difficult to uphold these virtues.  You see, we are getting older.  And while many of us can still carry on a reasonable conversation, some of our faculties are in decline.  I have started to notice that I don’t hear my wife as well as I used to.  Is this a result of playing in a rock and roll band in my teenage years or something more sinister?  And my eyesight isn’t quite as sharp as it once was although I have no problem identifying the vast array of pies at the local bakery.

A recent trip to the outpatient department revealed some of the challenges of keeping things confidential.  The hospital was very busy on this particular day and many of the case rooms in the unit were being used by more than one patient, separated merely by a curtain.

While I waited patiently to be seen, I could not help but overhear the conversation going on not three feet away.  My hearing isn’t that bad.  An elderly couple that I had seen entering the room earlier, were shouting at each other.  It appeared that one or both had forgotten their hearing aids at home.

The harried nurse on duty arrived and proceeded with the intake interview.  The older gentleman was complaining of persistent stiffness.

“Are you a diabetic?  Do you smoke?  Are you on any medications”?  The questions were delivered with laser like precision but the answers were returned in something less than warp speed.  The lady answered the queries on her husband’s behalf – partially because he couldn’t hear a damn thing but mainly because this is how most conversations go after 45 years of marriage.

On the question of medications, the elderly lady opened her purse.  She was now no longer behind the curtain but in full view of everyone in the room.  She started to empty the contents of the purse.  The first two items were chewing gum and a bingo dauber.  Following this was what appeared to be the entire inventory of one of the local pharmacies.

“Well, he takes this for high blood pressure, and this is for cholesterol”.  The litany of the saints wouldn’t have taken as long to recite as she plowed ahead.  Finally and mercifully she found the bottom of the purse.  “Oh, Jesus, Harold, what in the hell are these blue pills called”?

I pretended not to hear any of this as I grinned at this last revelation.  I did my own diagnosis.

As I prepared to leave the room much later, I heard the doctor tell poor Harold that all of that planting in the garden yesterday had given him a stiff back and nothing worse.

Never judge a pill by it’s color.

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