Jan K. Collins and Jan L. Warner offer financial and legal planning advice for Baby Boomers and seniors in the new Lifestyles section...
Alice obeyed, "Eat this," and grew.
"If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." ... this observation is credited to baseball great Mickey Mantle.
I often think of this phrase when preparing my week's dosages of meds. I find them a mixed blessing. There are several intended to adjust my blood pressure along with an antidepressant, anticoagulant, aspirin and others that make a total of 12.
'Tis said they are keeping me going. But I find myself asking, at what price?
The drug companies list possible side effects or interactions. You could suffer weakness, diarrhea, dizziness, etc. Recently, I was given several new prescriptions at once so have no way of telling what is disagreeing with me. Years ago, when I was introduced to one med at a time and complained of troublesome side effects, my doc would substitute another.
That's a thing of the past. Today, in my experience, these possibilities are assumed to prompt hypochondria, and if any are suffered, they are ignored.
I frequently wonder if it's a fair trade to extend your days even as your quality of life deteriorates.
I don't dare stop taking any of the medications because of the dire warnings on the accompanying literature.
I question the value of advertising meds on TV.
Take one particular medication, and you will be playing with your grandchildren for years to come, they state, then caution that you could lose all your hair, lapse into senility or have a stroke. Who would opt to take such a med, considering the odds?
And how about the names of these miracle compounds? I think it's a conspiracy to confuse us. They are given Latin-sounding names, hard to pronounce and even harder to remember. That's bad enough, but then they give them a second obscure name. When I firmly deny that I take a particular medicine, they will pull out its alias. "Oh, yeh, I take that."
Why can't they have names that describe their action? Makes You Pee, Cheers You Up, Prevents Clots, Lowers BP, etc., would take the mystery out of our medications.
If physicians are intent on confounding us, why don't they dress like Merlin the Magician? Flowing robes and conical hats would identify them as wizards.
Lorraine Lilja is a retired Press-Republican reporter. A collection of her columns, "Lilja's World," is for sale at local bookstores. Lilja can be reached at llilja17@hotmail.com.
