Show me your Pill Planner.

I didn’t have a pill problem in my thirties. In my forties it was more about one-off pill popping. Then I got breast cancer, literally on my 46th birthday, and the asshole that gave it to me didn’t include the receipt so by the time I figured it all out the return window had passed.

This is when I went from the occasional Benadryl or Tylenol PM to ORGANIZING my pills. I invested in a bigger and better wine rack, because I needed more pills. Health issues + prescriptions = more wine. Who said you’d never use algebra?

One pill you remember. It’s in the one pill bottle on your vanity. Two pills you remember, but they’re logistically more irritating and time consuming to take. Three pills and you need to organize those drugs, girl.

After breast cancer, I took Tamoxifen to block estrogen and progesterone receptors, because my type of cancer gobbles that shit right up. A woman in her forties blocking estrogen gets…bitchy. And that’s understating it. Commercials will have you believe that every problem plaguing women is solved by taking copious amounts of estrogen. When you’re on Tamoxifen, you get the symptoms of menopause even if you’re not IN menopause, AND you’re bitchy, so this may make you eat rich foods and drink delicious wine, which makes you fat and possibly get The Acid Reflux.

SIDE NOTE: After the age of 50, one is required to refer to particular kinds of maladies prefaced by the word THE. So you don’t have diarrhea, you have The Diarrhea. You don’t get high; you smoke The Marijuana. You have The Covid. The Constipation. The Acid Reflux. So you go to The Target or The Walmart and get some of The Advil/Miralax/Pepto. Them’s the rules, people. I don’t make them.

Because of these mathematical factors, I suffered from depression. And I mean the “Let’s lie in bed and think about every embarrassing and shameful thing you’ve done in your entire life and everyone remembers it and is talking about you and it’s not even because of your bad wardrobe or hair or swearing and you should probably get a cabin in Idaho and write a manifesto and consider being The Unabomber.”

Is that an exaggeration? Not REALLY. When I had The Cancer, I felt like I was living in an upside-down glass. I could see everyone and wave and interact with them, but I wasn’t breathing their air or feeling their sunshine. I was Other.

There is no “right” way to have The Cancer but know that your friends with The Cancer will maybe be a little distant or act like they don’t need help or attention, but it’s the one time in my life that I really did need it. True to form, I acted like I didn’t. Getting a card in the mail or a bag of cookies dropped off was a bigger deal than I’d let on. One of my oldest friends (yeah, bitch, I said YOU OLD) set a daily timer for 10 minutes before my radiation appointment and texted me. Sometimes something funny. Sometimes serious. EVERY DAY FOR 42 DAYS. I’m not a ‘talk on the phone’ girl, but that text was my lifeline, every day. I knew she was out there, with me while showed a whole room my boobs and they zapped me.

Well fuck off, I know Aristotle is dead and not reading this blog like most of America, but NICE TRY. I guess, like the other great philosopher, Eminem, I’m cleanin’ out my closet. (I’m sorry, Mama.) It’s weird, I talk way more about The Cancer ten years in remission than I did when I had it.

Palate cleanser: Someone made a boob cake when The Radiation was over. Here’s a picture of Current Husband getting ready to motor-boat it:

I was on Omeprazole for ten years for The Acid Reflux, and it did nothing but shorten my esophagus. I sleep on the Jay-Z Triple Black Diamond Nursing Home Bed, which I set at a 45-degree angle and pile up with pillows, and that PLUS Omeprazole didn’t beat it. When I was at the GI doc a few weeks ago, he said we should try Voquezna. I asked how it’s different, and he said, “It Will Kick Some Acid”. I thought that was pretty funny until I realized it is, actually, their marketing line.

This makes me think of one of my favorite Key & Peele skits ever, for Levitrol:

Bottom line? I’m at the age where I can have a long discussion about pills and will ask you which prescriptions you’re taking, and you’ll have an answer. YOU WILL. Because you know you’re on something and you ain’t High on Life.

You MAY have a problem, but you know what? At least you have your handy plastic Day of the Week drug box and you’re organized about it, which is more than your post-teen self could ever say.

Happy Monday, you elderly junkies.