Feelin’ Galoovey
During a visit to my primary care physician on Election Day, he told me my lab tests had revealed acute, chronic Bonkus of the Konkus.
“How long have I had that?” I asked.
“Probably your whole life,” he said. “But it’s probably flaring up because of the election.”
“Am I in trouble?” I asked.
With a smile I took to be disarming and inappropriate, he said, “No. You’re at risk.”
“What kind of risk?”
“It depends who wins the election,” he said with a wink.
“That’s easy for you to say,” I blurted. “What should I do?”
“Relax,” he said. “I’ll call in a 90-day prescription to your local pharmacy. You can pick it up on the way home. By the time of the inauguration, you should be fine, no matter who wins.”
“A prescription for what?”
“It’s called Galoovey,” the doc said. “It was just approved by the FDA. You’ll be fine.”
I was tempted to tell him some people consider fine to be a four-letter word, especially when it’s used in reference to any government agency. But ever the diplomat, all I said was, “After COVID, the FDA doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies.”
“I agree,” he said. “But take the Galoovey anyway.”
I left his office feeling less than fine with the whole situation.
The next day, a woman from his office called. “The doctor called in a prescription to your local CVS. It has some side effects, but he wants you to take it anyway.”
I’d never been warned about a prescription in a phone call before that moment. It made me think even less of the FDA.
The Devil’s in the Details
I went to CVS later that day to pick up my prescription. Judging from the look on the pharmacist’s face when she handed me the bag, she seemed to think I was headed to the slaughterhouse — or she thought I’d voted the straight Democrat ticket the previous day. Neither was true. But feeling slightly more wary than usual, I read the documentation that came with the prescription as soon as I got home.
Right off the bat, it seemed odd to me that this one prescription should come with 40 pages of documentation, and I soon learned my Spidey Sense was correct. After listing all the chemicals in the drug and spelling out all the drug-interaction precautions, I found this on the last page in print so small I had to use a magnifying glass along with my trifocals:
Don’t take Galoovey if you’re allergic to Galoovey or any of its active ingredients. Don’t take Galoovey if you’re pregnant, planning to be pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or have already died from taking Galoovey. This drug may increase the risk of liver or muscle damage. Severe stomach or abdominal pain; yellowing eyes, skin, and dark urine; muscle pain, tenderness, weakness, especially with fever or unusual tiredness; rash, itching, or swelling; severe dizziness; trouble breathing; partial paralysis, joint pain, or clubfoot; severe acne, contact dermatitis, psoriasis, or eczema; whooping cough, bronchitis, or pneumonia; excessive belching, farting, or diarrhea; and hallucinations about Nazis, Adolf Hitler, fascism, inhumanity, autocratic government, Draconian policies, fear, loss, anger, and hate have happened. This is not a complete list of possible side effects. If you notice other side effects not listed above, stay calm. Nothing will be as bad as you expect.
I had three questions: (1) How can I know I’m allergic to Galoovey if I haven’t taken it yet? (2) If I don’t identify as a woman, how can I get pregnant? (3) Why is it that side-effects warnings on prescriptions always say things just happened? No, they didn’t. They were the consequences of people ignoring the warnings and taking the drugs anyway. Otherwise, the warning might just as well have said:
PLEASE NOTE: One time, some dude named Floyd was walking along, minding his own business, when he suddenly developed a clubfoot, extreme flatulence, and unfounded fears of fascism.
Why won’t they tell us the truth? Floyd wasn’t just walking along and had all that stuff happen to him. He disregarded the documented side effects of the prescription he was given and took the shit anyway.
Dying Arts
Like empiricism, critical thinking, intellectual curiosity, and common sense, telling the truth is a dying art. Like the drug side effects we disregard, we disregard the truth because it’s hard. Sometimes we just don’t like it. And sometimes it hurts. But none of that makes it untrue.
In the end, I chucked the prescription and went back to doing what I used to do before the election: I took two tablespoons of Reality and put on my Big Boy Pants. Everything turned out okay, and my Bonkus of the Konkus didn’t get any worse.
Sometimes Reality and truth are bitter pills. But we can’t all be feelin’ Galoovey.
Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/
