Soapbox

The Wonder Drug that Works Wonders

  After nearly 9 days of relapsing fever and frustrated by a diet of tylenol, cough syrup and exhaustion, I was back at the doctor's office. I was tired of fighting. I wanted him to give me something in a bottle that would make it go away.
   The doctor decided it was time to stop playing around.
  "I'm not going to play around with this" he said as I sat, hunched, shivering and miserable in his exam room. "I'm going to give you a prescription for something strong that's gonna knock this out once and for all." that sounded good to me.

   An hour later I crawled into bed, placed my brand new bouncing baby bottle of antibiotics on the table next to my water bottle, pulled the covers  up to my chin and considered the informative pamphlet the pharmacy gave me.
   The pink pill I had just swallowed was either going to make me better at last, or it was going to make an internal organ or 2 rupture. Or maybe both. A two-fer!

   Honestly, that first day, I was sick enough that I didn't really worry about any of that. But by the next day it began to prey on my mind, and I did some more research.
    And I began to wonder what I was doing. Dear Lord, these pretty little pills can cripple you for life! And I was supposed to blithely toss one down my sore throat for the next 10 days.
    Why had my doctor given me this stuff?  It's not like I had Ebola or SARS or something. Not that you would take this stuff for those diseases, because they're viruses. But what if I just had a virus, huh?
   I'd been miserable and felt sorry for myself. I wanted a quick fix, a magic pill. But was I really willing to flirt with catastrophic connective tissue failure, just to feel better a few days sooner?
    And if so- why?
   
     I have always wondered about those commercials for the latest drug that promise to make your whole life shiney and new… if they don't kill you. Like the asthma drug commercials  filled with happy people walking on the beach and playing with their dogs that oh yeah, might cause you to kill yourself, or increase the chance of asthma related death.
    Asthma related death. From an asthma drug. It will either make you better or it will make you worse. Have fun! Insomnia medication that puts you to sleep, alright, but may also cause you to drive in your sleep, hallucinate or punch your kids in the face without remembering it.
   It's like your doctor hands you a gun with one round in the chamber and saying "Here you go!"

     Now I realize that many of these Russian roulette drugs are for conditions that can be way more than just minor inconveniences. Rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, COPD- these can be a big deal. Even insomnia: you have it long enough, it can really screw you up. My great aunt had psoriasis, and it was a haunting, debilitating condition. But I don't think she'd have been willing to risk death just to be able to wear short sleeves again.
    Do the people who take these drugs really think about what they're doing? How many of them have carefully weighed their need and the risk of death, and how many of them are seduced by the happy people laughing on the beach in the commercials and just want something to make whatever it is go away?

    Well, I stopped taking the wonder drug. I decided coughing and a sore throat really isn't such a big deal after all.