In Which I Get a Call from My Pharmacy

I feel like my pharmacy has crossed over from healthcare into multi-level marketing. I just got a call asking me to schedule COVID, flu, pneumonia, RSV, and a mysterious booster that apparently pops up every 10 years like a cicada.

First of all, the fact that they are keeping track of what I am or am not putting into my veins is unsettling.

Second, the suggestion that we just mainline all of it in one sitting feels just a hair ambitious. Every time I walk into the CVS, the pharmacist is sprinting around like he’s defusing a bomb - phones ringing, printers screaming, humanity collapsing - yet somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, he found the time to personally call me. Not an underling. Him. Not my doctor. Me.

Western medicine feels a little off right now. I’m not saying I want to chew on willow bark and manifest my way out of psoriasis, but it’s starting to feel like a safer bet than letting an alchemist spin me around in a chair and dart-gun my immune system.

For someone like me who's always been a rule-follower (and if you know my history, you know why), I'm finding at 51yo that I'm not as susceptible as I've always thought I was.