I wrote this today over at Faith's blog and it is equally apropo here, so I am jumping the queue. I have four prescriptions that I left hospital with. An anticoagulant, a cholesterol med (though my ldl cholesterol was in the excellent range), a beta-blocker, and aspirin. The anticoagulant I will take for three months to a year, to keep clots off the stent. The rest are lifelong. Shit.
Prescriptions
Bitter white powders,
pressed and stamped, put in bottles
and dispensed for us
as if we shape shift
behind their white white influence.
Yet I know I need
some of what they do,
might even die without them.
I hate taking pills.
May 9, 2009 2:22 PM
Contraction
1 week ago
I am hoping you are better. I hate taking pills also. hugs and kisses and warmest prayers.
ReplyDeleteour lives...reduced to vials
ReplyDeleteI too know some are likely needed and I wonder...is this what they meant by better living through chemistry? Just kidding.....
ReplyDeletenice poem
Linda
Thank you for the poem Christopher.
ReplyDeleteWe can take our pills together;)
Cheers!
Keep well...
I hate taking pills but am so grateful to have them when I need them. I think the part I hate is the concession to mortality.
ReplyDeleteOn Mother's Day: Take your medicine, Christopher!
{{{Cherie}}} I am better. It was really minor as heart trouble goes. I will go back to work as if nothing happened on Tuesday unless something very strange happens.
ReplyDeleteTeri, Yes indeed.
Linda, The anticoagulant keeps the stent clean, and that artery support is also a snag for clotting until it is incorporated slowly into the artery wall. It is a necessary lubricant. The cholesterol pill does the same with plaque which can build up there as well as in other places. The beta blocker has something to do with the chemistry which eases the body's compressive mechanisms. This drops blood pressure and slows heart rate. It is largely a mechanical control that is attempted, much like additives to a car's oil.
Faith, you actually have more chance to get off your pills than me off mine. Only Plavix has a drop off date. :(
Karen, "when I need them" is the operative phrase. The part I hate is that these pills are big hammers for rather small nails so often. The side effects are not cool, this as Faith can tell you and so many others. For example, I have bloody nose trouble. With Plavix at strength in me, what have been small seepages that stop on their own are likely to turn into torrents as I experienced in the hospital under Heparin. At least I know that Afrin is something to try before I get frantic and go to the doc just to get a nosebleed stopped. That's just ONE example.
But Karen, I accept your mother's impulse and assure you that I have been well trained by my life to take pills.
Oh Christopher -- I have been on the same medicine for 20 years:) And it no longer works -- so maybe 20 more years of the next stuff (if I am lucky) So not much chance of no meds for me -- I am chronic:) Though the prednisone can't last!! :P
ReplyDeleteWe can remind each other in the mornings -- did you take your pills? Yuck ;)
{{{Christopher}}} Be careful going back to work (still mother's day so I can nag) Remember your body went through trauma -- maybe more than your brain recognizes. Don't rush into things.
Love to you
xoxox
...go ask Alice...
ReplyDeletehope that referent is not too obscure!
pills...little astronauts traveling the moonscapes of my innards, boldly going...
thank the stars for poetry... a medication of/from the inner landscape
{{{Faith}}} I did take my pill, Mom, just one in the morning, plus the usual vitamins and stuff like that. I actually feel better today than I have in a looooong time, because this has fixed a long term issue, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteHarlequin, a reference to the Jefferson Airplane is a reference to my days in San Jose in those precise days of the White Knight walking backwards and the King off his head. These pills are the ones that mother gives you. Don't do anything at all.
well...nothing interesting, unless you are a specialist for some reason in all the other stuff pills do...
look for the chewable orange flavored pills..... they're the best ones......
ReplyDeletehappy mother's day
Ghost, I am grateful for your offer of a mother for my but I have given them up for the duration of my recovery. You are too kind.
ReplyDeleteThanks for being my friend.
I am on medications for life too. Sometimes I wake up wondering, did I take those last night...I hate taking pills. But I need them to stay healthy, and I do want that. I had a pretty bad scare this year, so, I will grin and take them.
ReplyDeleteStay well, my friend.
S, There is so much to this. It is not really the pills so much as trusting this imperfect allopathic vision to do more good than harm. There are no procedures or chemicals so perfectly right that they cause no harm. And there is more, because this whole thing feels like a deflection from what I was going to do and leads to that question, How Come I Never Get To Have/Do What I Hoped For??
ReplyDeleteI have to bend over and take it again. With dignity and grace. Cheerfully.