Problem or Inconvenience?
Fri., November 15, 01:45 PM
The difference between an inconvenience and a real problem is in your perception of it. For my part, I find I can work around most inconveniences. It’s like the old saying: “I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.” Let me give you an example.
I have osteoporosis. I’ve known about it for four or five years, and it hasn’t progressed too far yet. Who knows how bad it might be if I hadn’t been taking supplemental calcium for the last thirty-five years or so? In any case, last year my doctor and I decided it was time to start treating it. Since I refuse to take estrogens, we opted for Fosomax®.
As it happens, Fosomax is annoying. You have to take it first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach; if you forget and eat or drink something else first, you can’t take it that day. You take it with a big glass of water (not juice or soda), and then you must wait thirty minutes before you can have anything else. Meanwhile, you must also remain upright; you cannot go back to bed.
Because it is such a nuisance, doctors tried to find out whether it could be taken less often than every day. (As a matter of fact, I was almost in that study, but I was disqualified because of my diabetes.) Indeed, they found that a patient could take a larger dose once a week, and that is what I do now.
I choose to take my pill on Friday, because it is my day off and because, if for some reason I can’t take it on Friday, I can still take it on Saturday. Y’know what? It’s still a pain in the patoot. I try to remember to leave the Fosomax out on Thursday night, and I put a reminder in with my Friday morning pills, just in case I start to take them first. So most of the time I remember – a big glass of water, my pill, and set the timer for thirty minutes. Then I walk around doing as much of my morning routine as I can: make coffee, wash up any dishes from last night, check my sugar, maybe start to read the paper. Be careful about bending down; you could regurgitate and irritate your esophagus. (It never happened, but that’s what they tell you.) One thing I can do is go online for a while.
I’ve been doing this for about a year, and it’s still annoying. But it’s only inconvenient. Waking up some morning to find that one of your vertebrae cracked during the night: now that’s a problem.
