~ Pigeonholed ~

I’ve been trying to get my blood pressure under control over the last few months.  Apparently I have a type AAAAAAAA personality, which you may already have heard, usually kills a person before they are 30.  At the decrepit age of 45, I figure it’s my amazing genes and medical science that have gotten me this far.  I’m not saying it’s pretty; I’m not saying I’m a model of health and well-being.  What I am saying is that I’m not 6 feet under ground…yet.

One of the newest meds good ol’ Doctor Duggirala tried to put me on was a diuretic.  It worked.  My blood pressure tanked like a pregnant hippo in the zoo pond.  (I don’t know why my mind immediately went to a pregnant hippo when I was searching for a metaphor, but just go with it.  It’s crazy in this head, Vern.)

And if you don’t know how a diuretic works, simply put, it takes fluid volume out of the blood vessels, thereby lessening the pressure within the blood vessels.  This will make you pee.  Often.  Often and copiously.  With no regard to where you may be or what you may be doing at the time.

Every morning I diligently take the two fistfuls of various medicines that keep me artificially alive, and twenty minutes later, the peeing begins.

I also run errands just about every morning.  Not so much because I am busier than a mouse at a burlesque show, but more because I’m inefficient as hell.    And I go to the grocery store about 3 times a week (see inefficiency above).   The pharmacy at my grocery store is on the way to the bathroom, and I always wave to the nice (read: handsome) pharmacist there.  The first day he asked if he could help me, and I simply said, “Diuretic!” as I shook my head.  He smiled and nodded and that was that.   Two days later, he saw me as I was running to the bathroom and he chuckled, “Again?” and I said, “Yep”.   The third time that week I stopped at his counter, after I had peed, and introduced myself.  We had a scintillating discussion about diuretics and I went on my merry way.

The next week as I was passing he said “Hey there, Pam!” as I hustled by.  Then I heard him say to the other guy behind the counter, who I’d never seen, “Oh, that’s just Pam.  Diuretics.”

I’ve been pigeonholed by the meds I take!

Thank God I’m not on Ducolax.