Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Better -- And Safe From Nerve Gas

     So, yesterday I was heading back to work?  Didn't happen.  The closer it got to happy-drive-to-work time, the worse my innards got.  I called in sick -- again! -- and headed to the drive-thru doctor.

     They listened to my symptoms, decided not to send me to a specialist -- in part because I was still within the reasonable upper limit for the duration of viral gastroenteritis -- and instead prescribed something for symptomatic relief:  Atropine!

     Actually, Diphenoxylate/Atropine, which works to, er, slow things down.  Scary-small pills with a long list of warnings.* It took the pharmacy until mid-afternoon to find any, and the first result of my taking one was to make me extremely drowsy.  I did not have to wake up every couple of hours, which was a huge improvement on most of the past week.  So far, so good, though there may be a price to pay by and by. 
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* Atropine is a "natural" substance.  You'll find it in deadly nightshade, Jimson weed (datura), mandrake and belladonna, among others. Yessirree. all-natural, how could it possibly be a problem...  Ahem.  Named, by the way, after Atropos, the one of the three Fates who decided when you were going to die.

7 comments:

Ambulance Driver said...

Lomotil is good stuff. It'll put the brakes on boiled okra.

I took some standing on a hotel balcony overlooking a river once. Accidentally dropped a pill in the water, and the next morning there was a sandbar there. ��

Roberta X said...

I believe this. --And yet, "it still moves," at least on schedule as of this morning. I'm being very cautious with the pills, hoping to maintain a balance.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Always good to be safe from nerve gas.

Hope this helps. Sounds like it is doing so.

Drang said...

. Named, by the way, after Atropos, the one of the three Fates who decided when you were going to die.
I did not know that.

Lordy, all the people in the Army I could have bored and/or not amused with that bit of trivia

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Jimson is a prolific local weed down here, and every once in a while you hear about some psyco-naut chasing a 'high' they heard about on the 'net and burning out their liver when they drink a 'tea' of that stuff...

Ritchie said...

I read the pill bottle labels now, and I' scared to ingest anything but pure spring water. I'm sure this will be the demise of me when I slip and fall on the mossy rocks.

Windy Wilson said...

It used to be that you had to go to the library to read up on what questionable drugs your Doctor prescribed for you; now that information is included on huge pieces of tissue paper in 3-point type in the box your drugs came in. Thanks for telling about Atropos. Public school never told us about the individual names of the three Fates. Now I need to look up the name of the one who spun the thread and the one who measured it out.