BITTER MEDICINE

YOU COULDN'T HAVE ASKED for a more beautiful dawn. I'm glad no one's here to see me staggering around in my nightgown on mornings like that, raising the sun blind and fumbling with my camera, hurrying before the color changes. Just minutes later the sky had changed to this:

Let me set the domestic medical scene. A couple of months ago the oncologist prescribed potassium for Mr. Bob, to be taken twice a day. Some of you may know......we didn't.......that particular pill is huge. I think it could be termed a "horse pill". And the taking of it included a lot of complaining from Him Who Rarely Complains about it scraping his throat. 

On one of my outings to the pharmacy, I spotted a pill cutter and purchased it as a little surprise for him. But He Who Doesn't Like Gifts used it once and put it aside as useless and the complaining continued. 

The doctor suggested putting the pill in applesauce and gulping it down by that method. There was no grousing for a while which was a relief to both of us, but then it began again. We had to play a game of twenty questions before it came to light that he had run out of applesauce. He Who Doesn't Believe in Back Up Supplies had neglected to tell Her Who Is in Charge of Groceries that more applesauce should be on the next shopping list.


Last Thursday I asked the gerontologist who visits the Manor weekly if potassium could be taken in liquid form. The answer was affirmative, so yesterday we went to the Tea Room, where juice is on tap every day. We were armed with the bottle of Potassium Chloride, a tablespoon (Pray tell, what do oldsters without computers do to find out what 20 MCG (15 ML) is as a dosage?)


I recorded the proceeding which ended with a shudder.

“It should be the function of medicine to help people die young as late in life as possible”

Ernst Wynder

VIEW FROM 412

IT'S NOT EASY working "mesembryanthemum" into a sentence, but I just did.

ROOM WITH A VIEW

I worked last night on the Manor photo album,

making a new page by 

pulling together several pictures taken from our window.

For the first time in my life, 

I can see the sun as it moves from south to north,

 coming up each morning a little farther to the left 

at this time of year, 

before reversing its journey 

at the summer Solstice. 

I'd been educated to that fact,

but now I can see it from our perch on the fourth floor.

It influences the time I awaken

each morning.

When we lived in a leafy bower, 

it had its advantages as we enjoyed its sheltering coolness, 

but this new experience 

brings us the pleasure of living

on the top of our world.

Now do you suppose 

everyone will be clamoring to have us relocated 

so they can move into Room 412?

P.S.  Mr. Bob will want to launch into his lecture about the earth moving, rather than the Sun, but for all intents and purposes I'm leaving this entry the way it is. Call it poetic license, if you will.