I wake up convinced that an entire gammon joint has been shoved up each nostril. My eyes are popping out of my head owing to the pressure behind them. The drugs aren't working, even though I've double-dosed the lot. The nasal spray provides limited relief, although it should keep things up and running (sorry) for 12 hours.
I ask for some pseudoephedrine. My mother looks at me as though I've asked where the boy whores are kept. Turns out kids have been buying wheelbarrows full of the stuff from the various Marts of America and turning the active ingredient in Sudafed into crystal meth. The federal government has recently slapped a regulation on the sale of my favourite decongestant, which I could have been turning into Tina the whole while.
My sister and I sneak off to the mall for an afternoon of drooling over stuff. We wander the JCPenney, the Dillards (where I find a tasty pair of Kenneth Cole Reaction shoes for GBP29), everywhere up to and including Victoria's Secret and then hit the food court for a heap of teriyaki the size of my congested head.
As we do, my sister and I discuss our family. We're often concerned that we are saying or doing things that may hurt our mother's feelings, and this furnishes us with plenty of consternation. We never quite know what's going to set her off: we walk in a minefield full of scorpions in the dark. There are, however, two very certain no-go areas: politics (mom voted for Bush, which was for us not so different from seeing her walk into the house one day dressed in a Nazi costume and calling herself Helga) and drugs. Today, most of what my sister and I discuss is related to drugs.
There's a drug for everything here in America. There are even drugs to level the side-effects of other drugs. Drugs are advertised on television more often than cars or food. For a place so alarmist and paranoid about them, America sure do love it some drugs.
My mother is on a statin drug, which is, in something like 98% of the population, effective in lowering 'bad' cholesterol levels. My sister takes this drug as well. She is also a nurse and believes in Western medicine. So do I, but we both know there are holes in every science. Small holes, granted, but holes nonetheless. Kathy has seen great benefits from statins. My mother thinks they caused her arrythmia last year, for which she was hospitalised, and her leg cramps, both of which can be found in the side-effects listing on the 'world of statins' pages on the internet. She's stopped taking them against her doctor's advice.
Long story short, everyone's at odds with my sister over these bloody drugs. (My brother is on them as well. He didn't like them, either. As he often sees things my mother's way, this comes as no great surprise.)
And I'm wondering how, with damned near everyone smoking and/or overweight, eating too many fried and 'beige' foods and not taking enough aerobic exercise, the fundamentals of good health are being so overlooked in favour of 'magic beans.' But anyway, a conclusion: if you feel your meds are doing more harm than good, don't take them. I don't have a problem with this. In principle, neither does my sister. I'm glad she is here.
We get the Sudafed, for which my sister must present a driving license and sign an electronic box, and drive to my mother's house. My head is now ready to implode.
My brother Greg and his partner Lou are in the living room when we get back to mom's. It's been nearly two years since we've all been in the same room. We hug quickly and I run to the water jug and pop my Sudafed. Two hours and four Jack Daniels toddies later, I'm not only effectively stoned but also able to breathe normally. The air fills with cat dander and cigarette smoke. I know I will survive, but I'm going to have to stay medicated for the next two weeks. I decide this is fine as it will help me stay level when the shit hits the fan, which it always does somehow.
I float up the stairs on a soothing wave of booze and drugs and don't have time to think about American ironies or contradictions or delusions before I drop out of consciousness.
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