Medicate Me
Aspirin is at it again! It seems that barely a week goes by without an announcement by the medical community concerning the benefits of aspirin. People who take aspirin every day live longer, have fewer heart attacks, lower cancer rates, better sex lives, fewer cavities, and clean-smelling breath. Actually, I'm not sure about some of those, but who knows? Wait a week and let's see.
My experience with aspirin has been less newsworthy. I still remember the first time I tried it. I didn't like it, and I didn't inhale. No, really. Anyway, I had a headache and told my mother. "Take an aspirin," she said. Then my father got home, and asked how I was. I told him I had a headache. "Take an aspirin," he said.
Now my parents are two of the sanest and most educated people I know, and when they both agree that I should do something, it usually turns into an extremely traumatic event. For instance, they both agreed that I should go to boarding school in New Hampshire to finish high school. It was a most enjoyable two years, studying Latin, Greek, how to subsist on meager rations that would make hardened monks say, "Oh, yuck." And then, "Is that all we get?" Not to mention freezing my butt off in a dorm room with twenty other guys and no heat all winter! At least I did not become bitter.
Anyway, since it was long before then, I trusted my parents and toddled off to medicate myself. About an hour after taking the aspirin, I had a headache. But now my stomach was also upset. This was to be the first of many similar experiences with medication, much of it recommended by actual licensed medical practitioners. Like the time I had chicken pox.
No home remedies could stop the itch, but the car was in Boston where it had gone to meet some old friends. Seriously, the car was with my father, so it was chaperoned at all times. The result was, we could not leave the house to get the Benadryl prescribed to stop the itch. And it was so bad I couldn't sleep for three days while we waited for the car. Finally, sheer exhaustion made it possible for me to start nodding off. Then the Benadryl finally arrived.
As you parents out there probably know, the side effect of Benadryl is that it puts you to sleep. So my mother dutifully gave it to me, thinking that it would put me out for twenty-four hours at least. Instead, it woke me up. That's right, it made me good and hyper. As you may've guessed, it didn't stop the itch either, and I was up for two more days.
Upon my consulting our physician about this, he nodded sagely (doctors are always nodding sagely, as if they are never surprised by anything) and said, "Yes, for one person in a thousand it has that effect." Further experience with doctors has led me to believe that if you walked in and told them that your arms kept falling off and you had to keep snapping them back on, and then demonstrated this, the doctor would nod sagely and say, "Hmmm." This is doctorese for "That's the damnedest thing I've ever seen! Wait until I tell this to everyone at the next medical convention. Boy won't they nod sagely!"
Then after a thorough examination, he would declare, "Well, this happens sometimes to about one person in a billion. Go home and get some rest. And take aspirin."
At any rate, I was wondering how they have determined that an aspirin a day reduces your risk of death from a heart attack. Is it really the aspirin? How many people do you know who take aspirin every day? How many people do you know who run to the emergency room every time they have a hang nail? Is it the same person? I say this is not an uncommon coincidence.
Now imagine how fast your aspirin-taking acquaintance would call an ambulance if he had chest pains! The hospital would warn him that he's had a mild heart attack, and upon his release he would eliminate fat from his diet, exercise more, and lower his amount of stress. And continue taking aspirin. On the other hand the non-aspirin-taker ignores his chest pains until he collapses from a massive coronary. When he gets out of the hospital, he goes home and immediately orders take-out from Benny's House of Grease. His aspirin-taking wife buys additional life insurance.
So when someone tells you about the benefits of aspirin, think about it. After all, if I told you that mountain tribesmen in New Guinea had the lowest chance in the world of dying in a traffic accident, how would you react? Would you:
A. Sell everything you own, and move directly to New Guinea in the interest of safety and longevity.
B. Smite your forehead and say, "That's it! We've got to tap the vast New Guinean market!" (Chairman of General Motors only)
C. Smile, and say, "Who comes up with this stuff?"
D. Take an aspirin.
If you answered A, I think you should know that it is a proven scientific fact that sending checks for large amounts to humor writers increases your sexual potency.
If you answered D, you are very, very weird. But you'll probably live longer. If you don't die in a traffic accident.
For the rest of you who are wondering where in the hell New Guinea is, it's in the Pacific somewhere, over by Australia, I think. But that may not help. According to survey reports, more than half of graduating high school seniors could not locate France on a world map. (I have also heard reports that it was Canada, or Norway, or Japan, but who cares? They're all in Europe anyway.) This being the case, you can take pride in knowing that you are definitely in the majority if you don't know where New Guinea is.
About the only people who do, and spend a large amount of time there, are anthropologists. They do a great deal of digging around in the dirt over there, in hopes of finding buried treasure. No, of course not. This would be cost-effective, and make more sense. What they are really looking for, are leftover pieces of ancient people, such as a jawbone.
Sometimes you will see an anthropologist or two on the cover of Time magazine, ecstatically holding a tiny chip in their hands. This chip, proclaims the article, is part of the jawbone of a precursor of man, and there is a computer-drawn reconstruction of the whole creature to go with it. Anthropologists everywhere rejoice, and flock to New Guinea. Then it turns out the chip was actually a missing piece from the model airplane kit belonging to an expedition member. This story makes page 43 in Time, right below the latest Michael Jackson scandal. Only anthropologists notice, and they return from New Guinea disappointed, leaving behind only those hardy few who actually have U.S. Government grants.
Oops, looks like I've digressed again. Oh, well, it happens sometimes. Now where's my aspirin?
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