i hate my stupid pills

listen carefully as our options have changed

Once in college I told a friend of mine that I tried never to take Advil for headaches because I wanted to be able to get through a headache without assistance. Said friend gave me a long look and then said: “Do you really anticipate some future in which you are unable to get Advil?” I had to admit, I did not. Now I am not supposed to take Advil for other reasons, so I guess I was wiser than I knew. Though I still take it, actually, just with caution, by which I mean I don’t wash it down with black coffee anymore.

Anyway, this story exists in my mind as a statement about how I hate depending on medical science even though I have no choice but to do so because

• my eyesight is terrible,

• my pancreas barely works, and

• my internal voice that says “kill urself? kill urself tonite? kill urself tonite queen?” broadcasts at a suboptimal volume

Plus, I hate headaches.

So I have to take my stupid little vitamins and supplements and wear my stupid glasses and take my stupid pills. It’s fine. It’s not like I need Adderall.¹ But last Monday I called my doctor’s office for a refill, as one does, and they said, well, we can refill these, but you don’t have a doctor at this practice.

To this statement, I replied: But… I do? I saw Dr. Redacted at redacted time last year.

They said: So you did. Well, then you do have a doctor.

That was not very encouraging. Past attempts to get refills from this medical practice have involved them randomly sending my prescriptions to new pharmacies without telling me, having to call them a few days in a row before they’d call things in, and so on. So the idea that I could have suddenly disappeared from their system was not that improbable. But I’d told them and they said they’d refill the prescription and that was the end of that, right…?

Then it was Tuesday. No medications had been refilled. But it was coming…right…?

Wednesday: ……right……?

Thursday: Well, it’s a national holiday.

Friday: ………………………………oh dear…

Now one can go to a pharmacy and get an emergency short term refill for most types of drugs, and so I did. But that emergency short term refill is just for five days. So the clock is still ticking. And I am still calling. And now the response (received while typing this post—breaking news) is that I have to make an appointment to get it refilled, but also, the earliest possible appointment is two months from now.

So what will happen here, I can’t really say.

I’ve always been aware that in some sort of Mad Max scenario I will bite it quickly because of my terrible eyesight. I’ll just go down like a feather. Dead. That’s what I get for being a hothouse flower produced and nurtured by a technologically advanced society. But I thought the flipside of that was that in the pre–Mad Max era things would be provided for me, so that when I was dying of thirst I could think fondly of all those days I got to be alive instead of wandering off of cliffs I didn’t see.

But no. Now I’m going to be dying of thirst thinking about all the time I spent calling the doctor on the phone. Which honestly isn’t that much time but I resent it all.

Really, the thing is (to go back to the Advil for a moment) that whenever I have the conversation with myself about what if you didn’t have [this thing you rely on], the answer is just that would be bad. There’s no Plan B for glasses, other than Lasik, which I’m not interested in trying. There’s no way to regenerate that pancreas. It’s just like, well. That would be bad. Not much you can do about it though. And there the matter rests. What am I supposed to do with that? Learn how to derive digestive enzymes from pigs myself? That’s going to mean killing a lot of pigs pretty much constantly and I don’t think that’s going to be a solution either.

And now, more breaking news, my medicine has in fact been called in. They probably were afraid of my forthcoming newsletter² on the subject. But I can’t be bought! Out it goes!

1. My impression is that if you need Adderall for drug abuse purposes it’s comically easy to get and if you need Adderall for medical purposes you have to go every month to a bridge troll who says “want to treat your ADD? complete for me these printouts three” as if you don’t have “I’m bad at filling out forms” disease.

2. To be clear I did not threaten them with newsletter appearances. The newsletter did not feature in any of my many messages on this subject.