Last night I couldn’t sleep. What else is new? So I decided to try this new drug I got the other day, Lunesta. I’d seen the commercial for it and this lady who couldn’t get enough shut eye for the longest was having the time of her life just sleeping all by her lonesome and dreaming about a glow in the dark butterfly. Of course, I just had to ask my doctor about it. I mean they tell you flat out, ASK YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT LUNESTA.
I know they say that about all the drugs and even though I tend to be an equal opportunity druggie there are some drugs I’ve seen advertised that I wouldn’t take if they gave them away free. Like Lunesta’s main competitor in the television commercial wars, Rozeram. It doesn’t even sound good. When I hear Rozeram I don’t know why but I think of bedsores and hemorrhoids. And I hate their commercial. Why on earth would I want to dream about Abe Lincoln or that other hideous beast?
Lunesta on the other hand, sounds like a loony siesta! Like a crazy funny nap full of fun dreams like the kind I used to have when I was a kid and didn’t worry so much. I’d dream about riding bicycles upside down in a haunted house or going to school naked on a day when there was no school and then the principal wouldn’t let me leave unless I drove the school bus home and it was pouring down rain and surprisingly mountainous for Miami.
Now when I sleep, which isn’t too often, I dream about getting into car accidents or trying to sell the house. Maybe that’s why I don’t enter the R.E.M. state as often. It’s just not that much fun anymore.
So last night, I was about to take a Lunesta because I was beginning to look like a crazed raccoon, but then I noticed this tiny little sticker carelessly applied sideways on the bottle at an angle. If I hadn’t had so much trouble trying to remove the childproof cap I might not have even seen the whispered warning, Avoid alcohol.
Avoid Alcohol?! Why do they always have to say that? When I read those words I picture myself walking down a narrow hallway lined with bottles and glasses and having to pull my elbows in so I won’t knock anything over. But do they really mean that if I wash the pill down with a few drinks I’ll sleep, sure, like a baby, but then I won’t wake up? Or is it just a typical C.Y.A statement?
If it’s really so dangerous to drink alcohol with this medication why don’t they use a bigger sticker, plaster it straight on the front of the label and use a larger font with all caps and a lot more stern warning like DON’T DRINK ANY ALCOHOL WHATSOEVER WHILE TAKING THIS DRUG OR YOU WILL DIE! They should also have like a little logo of maybe a wine, beer or whiskey bottle with a skull and crossbones on it too.
Damn! I’d already had a few glasses of wine, so I was worried about taking the pill. Would I get some much needed beauty sleep or end up six feet deep? I decided to read the ACCOMPANYING PERSONAL PRESCRIPTION INFORMATION.
May cause drowsiness. I laughed out loud. That’s a good one—a sleeping pill that causes drowsiness. No problem. But then I kept reading and the rest was not as amusing.
Side effects may include, but are not limited to: dizziness, heart palpitations, dry eyes, sore throat, upset stomach, nausea, wooziness (I love that word. I read it twice aloud just to hear the sweet sound of it) slurred speech, double vision, drooling, prickly rash, fever, chills, swelling of hands and feet, headache, tingling, numbness, snoring, shortness of breath, swelling, lumps, bumps, hives, itchy eyelids, droopy drawers (ok I made that one up) memory loss, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts, decreased sexual desire, seizures, coma, and untimely death. Well, it just said death. I added the untimely. But, not limited to death even? What so then you could die and then maybe burn in hell, or have to do community service for eternity?
Finally in all capital letters it said, DO NOT DRIVE OR OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY WHILE TAKING THIS MEDICATION.
That’s another fuzzy warning. Do they mean like don’t be a multi-tasking fool and try to juggle a pill jar, a glass of water and a steering wheel? Or are they saying that AFTER you take this medication and you’re stumbling around in your pajamas all woozy and drowsy, drooling and hallucinating and clutching your heart you might want to think twice before hopping on a tractor and heading out to plow a field?
I wish the drug manufacturers would be more clear and straightforward about this stuff. I read the insert three times and still wasn’t sure if I could safely take the pill but I was nodding off anyway just straining to read the tiny print.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
How My Mother Almost Became A Parrothead
I guess it's my fault really. I knew she was depressed. I mean more depressed than usual. She wa always depressed. Born depressed, I think. Anyway, she'd gotten to where she couldn't be bothered to play solitaire online or watch Law and Order marathons on the tube even. Yep, it was that bad.
So I said to her, "Mom, why don't you pack your things?" -- I could have said "Your muumuus and slippers," but I like to think I'm more tactful than that-- I said, "Come to Florida. We'll get a nice hotel room on the beach, park ourselves on one of those cushioned lounge chairs with the umbrellas, sip some wine or guzzle some Rum Runners and just relax. We'll lie in the shade, listening to the waves erode the shore. And the white birds- egrets or ibises or seagulls or whatever the hell they are-- we'll listen to them squawk and watch them dive for French fries in the sand, and just chill. You can forget about everything. Your friends who died of cancer. Your friends who didn't die but might as well have since they moved so far away. "
Normally, my mother wouldn't leave her apartment unless a fire alarm was going off but to my utter shock she agreed to make the trip down. She missed Florida I guess. She'd only moved one state away but it felt further. There was no ocean in Georgia and more importantly, no ocean breezes. The summer sun was just as hot, even hotter up there, and the only way a body could get any relief was to hunker down and blast the A/C. She lived in constant fear of power outages.
So she was coming, she said. Back to Florida, the beaches she used to love, the sun she used to worship until she went from a maiden with a golden, glowing tan to a matron with a brown leather hide and a case of Stage 3 Melanoma. But she didn't change religions, even after she'd had a huge hunk of poisoned flesh surgically removed from her thigh. As a sun worshipper, she wasn't just devout, she was a fanatic.
I found a deal at a 3 star hotel on a nearby beach. The rooms were small but you were up to your ears in amenities. By amenities, I mean bars, mostly. The Seaward had a couple of restaurants but they were really just bars in disguise. Everything they served was fried, from the food to the customers.
After our first full day of lying in the sweltering shade, dodging the sun's UV and other inexplicably less infamous rays, we rode the elevator to our rooms trying to decide if we should call room service or order out for a pizza.
Then on the sixth floor, the elevator stopped and a middle-aged man carrying an oversized tropical cocktail in his hand and wearing what appeared to be the top half of a parrot on his head, stepped inside. He wanted to go down, he said, didn't realize we were going up, so he started to step back out.
"You're coming with us, " my mother insisted. "Up to the fifteenth floor and then you can go back down after we get off."
I was glad he didn't put up on a fight because I wanted to get a better look at him.
"What the hell are you supposed to be?" my mother demanded. She can be very blunt at times.
"I'm a Parrothead," he said.
"What the fuck is a Parrothead?" she said.
My mother can be rather profane when she is not
a) being blunt
or
b) sound alseep.
Actually who knows what she's up to even then.
"We're Jimmy Buffet fans, " he explained, "We like to get together to have a good time and raise money for various charities."
My mother held back a hiccup and asked, "Do you have to drink a lot?"
The fellow, who could've easily passed for an ornithologist gone wild, took a long thoughtful sip form his flamingo-shaped straw, then shook his head.
"Uh, that's a personal choice, " he said.
As my mother pumped him for information it occurred to me that a charitable donation, while tax-deductible, might also help offset some of the pain of a hangover, at least the portion attributable to guilt.
"I think I'd like to become a Parrothead," my mother declared. "How do you sign up?"
This kind of shocked me because when I was in high school I had some Jimmy Buffet albums and she'd said she didn't "care for" his music then.
He looked at her doubtfully but said, "It's easy. There are chapters all over the country. You just go online, google Parrotheads, and then join the group in your area.
The elevator dinged then and we thanked the nice man with the parrothead for his information as we got off on our floor. The woman who gave me life and lived to tell about it appeared somewhat deflated but I was secretly relieved to know that the chances of my technologically-challenged mother ever decking the halls of this hotel, both plastered and feathered, were extremely slim. Why, just the week before she'd emailed me to tell me she couldn't get on the internet.
So I said to her, "Mom, why don't you pack your things?" -- I could have said "Your muumuus and slippers," but I like to think I'm more tactful than that-- I said, "Come to Florida. We'll get a nice hotel room on the beach, park ourselves on one of those cushioned lounge chairs with the umbrellas, sip some wine or guzzle some Rum Runners and just relax. We'll lie in the shade, listening to the waves erode the shore. And the white birds- egrets or ibises or seagulls or whatever the hell they are-- we'll listen to them squawk and watch them dive for French fries in the sand, and just chill. You can forget about everything. Your friends who died of cancer. Your friends who didn't die but might as well have since they moved so far away. "
Normally, my mother wouldn't leave her apartment unless a fire alarm was going off but to my utter shock she agreed to make the trip down. She missed Florida I guess. She'd only moved one state away but it felt further. There was no ocean in Georgia and more importantly, no ocean breezes. The summer sun was just as hot, even hotter up there, and the only way a body could get any relief was to hunker down and blast the A/C. She lived in constant fear of power outages.
So she was coming, she said. Back to Florida, the beaches she used to love, the sun she used to worship until she went from a maiden with a golden, glowing tan to a matron with a brown leather hide and a case of Stage 3 Melanoma. But she didn't change religions, even after she'd had a huge hunk of poisoned flesh surgically removed from her thigh. As a sun worshipper, she wasn't just devout, she was a fanatic.
I found a deal at a 3 star hotel on a nearby beach. The rooms were small but you were up to your ears in amenities. By amenities, I mean bars, mostly. The Seaward had a couple of restaurants but they were really just bars in disguise. Everything they served was fried, from the food to the customers.
After our first full day of lying in the sweltering shade, dodging the sun's UV and other inexplicably less infamous rays, we rode the elevator to our rooms trying to decide if we should call room service or order out for a pizza.
Then on the sixth floor, the elevator stopped and a middle-aged man carrying an oversized tropical cocktail in his hand and wearing what appeared to be the top half of a parrot on his head, stepped inside. He wanted to go down, he said, didn't realize we were going up, so he started to step back out.
"You're coming with us, " my mother insisted. "Up to the fifteenth floor and then you can go back down after we get off."
I was glad he didn't put up on a fight because I wanted to get a better look at him.
"What the hell are you supposed to be?" my mother demanded. She can be very blunt at times.
"I'm a Parrothead," he said.
"What the fuck is a Parrothead?" she said.
My mother can be rather profane when she is not
a) being blunt
or
b) sound alseep.
Actually who knows what she's up to even then.
"We're Jimmy Buffet fans, " he explained, "We like to get together to have a good time and raise money for various charities."
My mother held back a hiccup and asked, "Do you have to drink a lot?"
The fellow, who could've easily passed for an ornithologist gone wild, took a long thoughtful sip form his flamingo-shaped straw, then shook his head.
"Uh, that's a personal choice, " he said.
As my mother pumped him for information it occurred to me that a charitable donation, while tax-deductible, might also help offset some of the pain of a hangover, at least the portion attributable to guilt.
"I think I'd like to become a Parrothead," my mother declared. "How do you sign up?"
This kind of shocked me because when I was in high school I had some Jimmy Buffet albums and she'd said she didn't "care for" his music then.
He looked at her doubtfully but said, "It's easy. There are chapters all over the country. You just go online, google Parrotheads, and then join the group in your area.
The elevator dinged then and we thanked the nice man with the parrothead for his information as we got off on our floor. The woman who gave me life and lived to tell about it appeared somewhat deflated but I was secretly relieved to know that the chances of my technologically-challenged mother ever decking the halls of this hotel, both plastered and feathered, were extremely slim. Why, just the week before she'd emailed me to tell me she couldn't get on the internet.
Do not bleach. Do not wring. Lay flat to dry. Etc.
I usually never pay any attention to those washing instructions on the little tags inside clothes. If I wreck something by putting it in the washer and dryer then it wasn't meant to be worn by me. At least, not more than once.
I used to always read the care instructions but these days they're created for the international community or just the United States of Illiterates and instead of words they just have all these cryptic symbols with x's and o's that make me feel like I'm playing tic tac toe not attempting to do the laundry. I have no idea what they mean.
But it doesn't matter because what I really want to talk about is bleach. You know chlorine. Cl. Maybe you've heard of it. Perhaps you've used it to whiten your whites or lighten your teeth or hair, sanitize toilets, clean grout, remove mold and mildew.
Recently I hit the pool supply store and bought some chlorine bleach to put in the pool because the water in it was green. I wanted it blue, preferably light blue. The big yellow jug had two caps -a little one on one side and a big one on the other.
I took the cap off the little hole and started walking around the pool trying to squirt the chlorine into the water. It was annoyingly slow. Like I imagine your stream of pee might be if you were a man in a public restroom stalling for time waiting for Mr. Right with a wide stance to come in.
So I turned the jug sideways and sat on it to make the chlorine come out faster. It did. But still not fast enough. Did I mention it was about 95,000 degrees outside? I am not a fan of sweating. I bounced up and down on the jug - not as much fun as it sounds- and the stream came out a little faster but I was working my way around the pool and worried that my psycho neighbors might be filming me and planning to send the footage to America's Funniest Home Videos or the F.B.I. so I stopped.
I was about halfway around the pool by then and still had more than half the container full of chlorine so I decided to speed things up. I took the cap off the big hole. That was more like it. The clear liquid bleach reputed to be twice the strength of the kind wimps use in the washing machine was positively gushing out into the pool.
As I moved around the pool's edge spreading the chlorine around I looked down impressed that I hadn't spilled a drop on my pants or shoes. Then the last liter or so came out more erratically for some reason and suddenly bounced up at me. I got a liberal splash of chlorine in both of my eyes.
I screamed something very "on the nose" like "OMG! I just got a lot of bleach in both of my eyes" as I dropped the chlorine jug and ran into the house to the kitchen sink. I flooded my eyes with water repeatedly without stopping except a few times for a second to blink and see if I could still see. I could, but it was all hazy and cloudy and then I'd quickly resume the frantic flooding and splashing.
The whole time I was thinking to myself, I better not go blind. So this is what I get for bitching about the bad haircut I got last week. Now I won't have to look at it! and other random thoughts like that until my eyes were so sore I wasn't sure if it was from the chlorine or the relentless splashing.
After about 20 minutes I turned off the water and called Poison Control (I'm one of those accident-prone hypochondriacs who has them on speed dial) and the very nice lady said I'd flushed my eyes long enough and to go lie down and shut them and keep them shut for thirty minutes and then she'd call me back.
I did just as she said and my sweet baby dog knew something was wrong and jumped up on the bed and sat next to me with her paws on my chest looking at me with concern the whole time. I couldn't actually see her looking at me but I just knew. She's "in heat" but seeing as I was in trouble she didn't try to hump me.
After exactly 30 minutes -- I'm amazing like that-- I'd shut my eyes at 3:12 and opened them at 3:42, I was happy to see I could still see but when I looked in the mirror I saw my eyes were redder than they'd ever been, even during Mardi Gras, and they hurt A LOT.
For a moment I stood stunned staring at my reflection, repulsed by my crazed monster red eyes and rat's nest of a hairDON'T but amused by the way they seemed to kind of work together, when the phone rang. It was the nice lady from Poison Control again.
She asked me how my eyes were.
"I can see," I said. "But they are really sore, really red, and they feel dry and scratchy like they're full of granules or something."
She told me I most likely had burns or abrasions on my eyes which could get infected and urged me to get to an eye doctor or hospital right away to get my eyes checked so I got a ride to a nearby VisionWorks.
They were surprisingly busy given the "economic downturn" and even though I heard the receptionist tell a caller, "Sorry, we're booked solid today, " she ushered me into the examination room immediately. I took off my sunglasses and she gave me a large plastic spoon that I'd have guessed was intended for baking.
"Cover your right eye and read the smallest line you can see on the chart" she said.
I did okay I guess. I could read the third line from the bottom pretty well. Then I had to do the same thing covering my left eye and I found out I could see better out of the left eye than the right although I'm not sure that's how it was before the accident.
She wrote the information on a chart and left and then the doctor came in so quickly behind her I wondered if it was actually the same person or if some kind of wizardry was going on there. He zoomed over to me, all serious, and made me sit in a chair behind some eye gizmo contraption with my chin in a cup while he examined my eyeballs with a bright white light. At first he didn't say anything which made me so nervous I blurted out,"So, no housework for at least six months, right? "
He ignored me and just said, "Look up. Look down. Look to the side. Roll your eyes like you're listening to a Republican."
Finally he turned the little light off and pulled away the little chin cup thingy which I'd found quite charming, much nicer than stirrups, and said, "They're not as bad as I thought they'd be," explaining that basically what I'd done amounted to sandblasting my corneas. He prescribed antibiotic drops and liquid tears to put in my eyes while they healed and said my eyes would feel a lot better by morning.
"I guess I shouldn't read or strain my eyes too much. " I said. "Avoid bright lights and stay out of the sun? "
He nodded. "And stay away from mirrors too -- at least until your hair grows out."
I used to always read the care instructions but these days they're created for the international community or just the United States of Illiterates and instead of words they just have all these cryptic symbols with x's and o's that make me feel like I'm playing tic tac toe not attempting to do the laundry. I have no idea what they mean.
But it doesn't matter because what I really want to talk about is bleach. You know chlorine. Cl. Maybe you've heard of it. Perhaps you've used it to whiten your whites or lighten your teeth or hair, sanitize toilets, clean grout, remove mold and mildew.
Recently I hit the pool supply store and bought some chlorine bleach to put in the pool because the water in it was green. I wanted it blue, preferably light blue. The big yellow jug had two caps -a little one on one side and a big one on the other.
I took the cap off the little hole and started walking around the pool trying to squirt the chlorine into the water. It was annoyingly slow. Like I imagine your stream of pee might be if you were a man in a public restroom stalling for time waiting for Mr. Right with a wide stance to come in.
So I turned the jug sideways and sat on it to make the chlorine come out faster. It did. But still not fast enough. Did I mention it was about 95,000 degrees outside? I am not a fan of sweating. I bounced up and down on the jug - not as much fun as it sounds- and the stream came out a little faster but I was working my way around the pool and worried that my psycho neighbors might be filming me and planning to send the footage to America's Funniest Home Videos or the F.B.I. so I stopped.
I was about halfway around the pool by then and still had more than half the container full of chlorine so I decided to speed things up. I took the cap off the big hole. That was more like it. The clear liquid bleach reputed to be twice the strength of the kind wimps use in the washing machine was positively gushing out into the pool.
As I moved around the pool's edge spreading the chlorine around I looked down impressed that I hadn't spilled a drop on my pants or shoes. Then the last liter or so came out more erratically for some reason and suddenly bounced up at me. I got a liberal splash of chlorine in both of my eyes.
I screamed something very "on the nose" like "OMG! I just got a lot of bleach in both of my eyes" as I dropped the chlorine jug and ran into the house to the kitchen sink. I flooded my eyes with water repeatedly without stopping except a few times for a second to blink and see if I could still see. I could, but it was all hazy and cloudy and then I'd quickly resume the frantic flooding and splashing.
The whole time I was thinking to myself, I better not go blind. So this is what I get for bitching about the bad haircut I got last week. Now I won't have to look at it! and other random thoughts like that until my eyes were so sore I wasn't sure if it was from the chlorine or the relentless splashing.
After about 20 minutes I turned off the water and called Poison Control (I'm one of those accident-prone hypochondriacs who has them on speed dial) and the very nice lady said I'd flushed my eyes long enough and to go lie down and shut them and keep them shut for thirty minutes and then she'd call me back.
I did just as she said and my sweet baby dog knew something was wrong and jumped up on the bed and sat next to me with her paws on my chest looking at me with concern the whole time. I couldn't actually see her looking at me but I just knew. She's "in heat" but seeing as I was in trouble she didn't try to hump me.
After exactly 30 minutes -- I'm amazing like that-- I'd shut my eyes at 3:12 and opened them at 3:42, I was happy to see I could still see but when I looked in the mirror I saw my eyes were redder than they'd ever been, even during Mardi Gras, and they hurt A LOT.
For a moment I stood stunned staring at my reflection, repulsed by my crazed monster red eyes and rat's nest of a hairDON'T but amused by the way they seemed to kind of work together, when the phone rang. It was the nice lady from Poison Control again.
She asked me how my eyes were.
"I can see," I said. "But they are really sore, really red, and they feel dry and scratchy like they're full of granules or something."
She told me I most likely had burns or abrasions on my eyes which could get infected and urged me to get to an eye doctor or hospital right away to get my eyes checked so I got a ride to a nearby VisionWorks.
They were surprisingly busy given the "economic downturn" and even though I heard the receptionist tell a caller, "Sorry, we're booked solid today, " she ushered me into the examination room immediately. I took off my sunglasses and she gave me a large plastic spoon that I'd have guessed was intended for baking.
"Cover your right eye and read the smallest line you can see on the chart" she said.
I did okay I guess. I could read the third line from the bottom pretty well. Then I had to do the same thing covering my left eye and I found out I could see better out of the left eye than the right although I'm not sure that's how it was before the accident.
She wrote the information on a chart and left and then the doctor came in so quickly behind her I wondered if it was actually the same person or if some kind of wizardry was going on there. He zoomed over to me, all serious, and made me sit in a chair behind some eye gizmo contraption with my chin in a cup while he examined my eyeballs with a bright white light. At first he didn't say anything which made me so nervous I blurted out,"So, no housework for at least six months, right? "
He ignored me and just said, "Look up. Look down. Look to the side. Roll your eyes like you're listening to a Republican."
Finally he turned the little light off and pulled away the little chin cup thingy which I'd found quite charming, much nicer than stirrups, and said, "They're not as bad as I thought they'd be," explaining that basically what I'd done amounted to sandblasting my corneas. He prescribed antibiotic drops and liquid tears to put in my eyes while they healed and said my eyes would feel a lot better by morning.
"I guess I shouldn't read or strain my eyes too much. " I said. "Avoid bright lights and stay out of the sun? "
He nodded. "And stay away from mirrors too -- at least until your hair grows out."
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