WISDOM SPOTS? REALLY?
So, I make my way to the friendly dermatologist today for my semi-annual total body scan for cancer stuff. She looks in places the sun doesn’t shine, but that’s ok with me if it keeps me alive for a few more years. She calls all of these dark spots…’wisdom spots’ I’m not so sure about that, but it sounds better than ‘old age spots’, so I’ll take it.
I realize that the first rule for a doctor is to do no harm. But I ask you, do doctors ever get involved in the design of medicine bottles and or medications?
I think not. If they did, we would see major improvements.
Take for instance, aspirin bottles, you’ve got a splitting headache and need some quick relief and what do you have to do to open a bottle and shake a couple out? You have to line up 2 almost invisible little plastic points to exactly the same place or nothing will open. Do these little points have the tolerance of perhaps a pencil point? No, these are precise. They must be lined up within a millimeter of each other or, sorry Charlie. Trying to smash the bottle is useless as well, since these bottles are virtually indestructible. All this for under 5 bucks. Amazing. Don’t even get me started about those clamshell packages made out of depleted uranium plastic. No way you can open one of these after the age of fifty except by a skill saw. I wonder if the government tracks the number of injuries each year that occurred by some elderly person trying to open a container or plastic package? Whatever happened to screw on and screw off bottles?
Aspirin is one thing, but Imodium is another. A headache you can survive for a minute or so, but not when you need Imodium in a hurry. I mean those little pills are enclosed in some type of plastic made from the same material that is used in bullet proof vests. You are in the bathroom; no scissors or knife is handy, and you cannot open one of these things with your shaking fingers or your teeth…you can fill in the blank as to what happens next.
I know these drastic measures are designed to protect us and keep us safe but think about the poor guy that needs a nitroglycerin pill for his impending heart attack. “I don’t know officer, when I found him, it looked like he had been trying to take one of his pills, but he was just too slow”.
I truthfully believe that if you are old enough to go to war, vote, buy tobacco and drive an automobile, you should be able to select ‘easy’ packaging when you buy something. Folks with arthritis can’t open jars of plastic but they can drive 5,000 lb. cars at 80 miles an hour.
Write to your congress person and while you’re at it tell them the lettering on the packages and medications needs to be in much larger print as well. We’ll save that discussion for another day.
See you next week.
