Ivy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ivybgreenflower) wrote2005-05-01 10:07 pm
ivybgreenflower) wrote2005-05-01 10:07 pm
essay: it doesn't work
It doesn't work. My cough medicine doesn't work. We've become conditioned to believe that something will work, and when it doesn't, we blame something else, instead of the thing itself: maybe my teaspoon measure is off, so I didn't take enough. Maybe the bottle was mislabled. Maybe I'm immune to it.
No. It just doesn't work.
Since becoming sick a week ago today, I've taken a variety of medicines, none of which have worked very well. There are five bottles on the kitchen counter and two in my mother's medicine cabinet. There are two boxes of allergy pills that dissolve quickly. Three brands of cough drops. Two cups of tea. One teaspoon of warm honey.
And yet, my nose is running just so much that I sniff it back and not enough to properly blow it. So I swallow all that mucus, and it irritates my throat. So I cough. And I cough hard. So I take a cough suppressant, found in most of those bottles and pills and drops, and yet my chest is burning and my stomach muscles are sore. The area under my nose is red and raw from attempting to blow it; the mentholatum not only did not clear my nose, it did not fix the chafed areas. The tissues, supposedly soft, have been acting roughly the same as sand paper, pardon the pun.
You can't tell me that I didn't give them a proper chance. Several of my cough medicines tell me to take them once every four hours. But four hours pass, and I can't tell the difference between when I first took it and when it came time for my second dose. My cough drops tell me to take three every hour, but after three cough drops my coughing has not stopped. All I have is a menthol flavored mouth. Besides, they only gave me 20 drops in the box. If I followed the directions exactly... well, I couldn't, because three doesn't go into twenty. My calculator said so.
I think they're hoping that by the time I finished one cough drop I'd forget about taking the other three. You can't take three out at a time since they aren't wrapped, just thrown into a wax paper bag that wasn't even sealed when I opened the box.
Another brand did wrap theirs, and told me to take only two at a time, but they came in bags where their numbers probably weren't measured.
They're expecting us to give up!
How many times have you had your computer freeze? You try several methods for unfreezing it. Ctr-alt-delete doesn't actually do anything, if you think about it. It doesn't SOLVE the problem, it just gets rid of it. And that box comes up with a million different programs and how are you to tell which one is the sucky one? Sure, sometimes one will have that not responding label, but it's never just one program. Or that blue screen of death. Press any key to continue. I do, and nothing happens, at least, nothing helpful. Or I press ctrl-alt-delete again like it says to restart, but... again... nothing happens. So I yank out the plug or hold in the button. And it turns itself off. When I turn it back on, more blue. It tells me, basically, that I suck a lot for pulling the plug on my computer, shame on me, and now it has to see if I broke any bones. Well, computer, YOU started it. How else was I supposed to fix it? I could have sat there staring at that blue screen until my grandkids got married and the only "solution" would be to pull the plug.
I could sit here drinking cough syrup and munching cough drops until my cough goes away, but it'll probably go away faster if I
my computer froze. It honestly did. All it did was simply move slowly, but it still froze enough for me to forget what I was saying.
It's not just computers and cough suppressants. (I just went and took a half dose of cough medicine, the one that seemed to work a little more than the others. At the request of my mother.)
My nailpolish chips when it's supposed to be chip resistant. I still have to avoid touching things five minutes after my 90-second drying nailpolish was supposed to have dried. My book hasn't taught me. I'm still coughing and for the love of God why don't any of these medicines work?
meh.
No. It just doesn't work.
Since becoming sick a week ago today, I've taken a variety of medicines, none of which have worked very well. There are five bottles on the kitchen counter and two in my mother's medicine cabinet. There are two boxes of allergy pills that dissolve quickly. Three brands of cough drops. Two cups of tea. One teaspoon of warm honey.
And yet, my nose is running just so much that I sniff it back and not enough to properly blow it. So I swallow all that mucus, and it irritates my throat. So I cough. And I cough hard. So I take a cough suppressant, found in most of those bottles and pills and drops, and yet my chest is burning and my stomach muscles are sore. The area under my nose is red and raw from attempting to blow it; the mentholatum not only did not clear my nose, it did not fix the chafed areas. The tissues, supposedly soft, have been acting roughly the same as sand paper, pardon the pun.
You can't tell me that I didn't give them a proper chance. Several of my cough medicines tell me to take them once every four hours. But four hours pass, and I can't tell the difference between when I first took it and when it came time for my second dose. My cough drops tell me to take three every hour, but after three cough drops my coughing has not stopped. All I have is a menthol flavored mouth. Besides, they only gave me 20 drops in the box. If I followed the directions exactly... well, I couldn't, because three doesn't go into twenty. My calculator said so.
I think they're hoping that by the time I finished one cough drop I'd forget about taking the other three. You can't take three out at a time since they aren't wrapped, just thrown into a wax paper bag that wasn't even sealed when I opened the box.
Another brand did wrap theirs, and told me to take only two at a time, but they came in bags where their numbers probably weren't measured.
They're expecting us to give up!
How many times have you had your computer freeze? You try several methods for unfreezing it. Ctr-alt-delete doesn't actually do anything, if you think about it. It doesn't SOLVE the problem, it just gets rid of it. And that box comes up with a million different programs and how are you to tell which one is the sucky one? Sure, sometimes one will have that not responding label, but it's never just one program. Or that blue screen of death. Press any key to continue. I do, and nothing happens, at least, nothing helpful. Or I press ctrl-alt-delete again like it says to restart, but... again... nothing happens. So I yank out the plug or hold in the button. And it turns itself off. When I turn it back on, more blue. It tells me, basically, that I suck a lot for pulling the plug on my computer, shame on me, and now it has to see if I broke any bones. Well, computer, YOU started it. How else was I supposed to fix it? I could have sat there staring at that blue screen until my grandkids got married and the only "solution" would be to pull the plug.
I could sit here drinking cough syrup and munching cough drops until my cough goes away, but it'll probably go away faster if I
my computer froze. It honestly did. All it did was simply move slowly, but it still froze enough for me to forget what I was saying.
It's not just computers and cough suppressants. (I just went and took a half dose of cough medicine, the one that seemed to work a little more than the others. At the request of my mother.)
My nailpolish chips when it's supposed to be chip resistant. I still have to avoid touching things five minutes after my 90-second drying nailpolish was supposed to have dried. My book hasn't taught me. I'm still coughing and for the love of God why don't any of these medicines work?
meh.
no subject
no subject
cuz like the bedford...yo?