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A hard pill to swallow

Castlegar News bi-weekly columnist examines the medicated segment of our lives.
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Karen Haviland

What’s in your medicine cupboard? I recently discovered that if you want to know a good deal about a person all you have to do is take a gander inside their medicine cupboard.

From the above statement, you’re likely thinking that I am one of those people who, using the excuse that I have to relieve myself, take the opportunity to snoop while in the loo. Wrong!

Nope. In fact, I am talking about my own medicine cabinet.

The other day I was having a stomach ailment and, my thoughtful husband - in his zest to help - came to me holding a bottle of Colon Health pro-biotic capsules. Huh? Colon health? Where in heck did that come from? For the life of me I can’t remember buying that. I mean, really, Colon health?

I can only speculate that at one point I was taking antibiotics and wanted to ensure that there was a healthy balance of good and bad bacteria. Somehow, I still can’t see me buying those capsules.

Maybe it was a ‘leave behind’ from one of our many visitors. A thank you gift maybe?

“Oh, I wanted to thank you for the great time so I left you the rest of my Colon Health.”

But thank you honey for being so thoughtful and offering them up to me in your zeal to help me over my gastric hurdle.

Whatever the case might be, I thought it might be a good time to really take stock of what was lurking in the medicine cabinet.

Other than the usual medications of two 60-year-old people, I discovered folic acid. Isn’t that a prenatal vitamin? Long past that stage, thank you, I mean, thank goodness!

Sitting along side the vitamin was Gaviscon. No surprise there. The older I get the less tolerant my stomach becomes of overindulgences and spicy foods.

Keeping the Gaviscon company was a three-year-old bottle of a multi-vitamin for those over 50. Yes, those I clearly remember buying one year short of my 60th birthday. I suppose my rationale was I would use it to ward off aging the same way someone would use garlic to ward off vampires.

Obviously that didn’t work too well, the wrinkles kept coming. Even worse, have you ever tried to swallow one of those horse pills?

I often wonder why vitamin manufacturers couldn’t make vitamins which are easier to swallow. After all, they are now making adult gummy bear vitamins. Yup. You read that properly. I saw them in the store the other day and was so tempted to buy them just for the gummy bear aspect, but the adult in me balked at buying gummy bear vitamins.

I’m not so sure that’s a great idea. Can you imagine a toddler seeing those gummy bear vitamins and wanting some? And we all know child proof bottles simply means that the only age group which has trouble opening them are those of us over 30.

After more inspection, and digging deeper into the recesses of the cupboard, I found pure unrefined Emu oil. I was assured that it was a magic potion for anything that ails the skin. Yes, it was potent all right.

Every time I used it I could smell the whole herd of Emus, who evidently were residing in my medicine cabinet.

And, even though we have no baby in the house, you will find baby aspirin by the bucketful.

Any good health practitioner will advise those of us of mature age to take an aspirin a day to ward off stroke and heart attack. So, baby aspirin, let me introduce you to Folic Acid, the prenatal vitamin.

Ah, the irony of life!