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anti-press ezine 2002 03 11
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"We're Positive About The Negative"
A March E-dition
(C) Copyright 2002 Anti-Press All Rights Reserved
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* Sidelined By Side Effects *
This being our Last Will & Testament...
The closing two weeks of January, 2002. Tackled by head and chest crap. A
typical experience each winter. Just ride it out and the cold will go away
on its own; no use whining about it to the doctor. Plenty of rest & fluids
and the usual round of tried & true meds. Fourteen days but it goes away...
Only to return in full force for after mid-February. Fed up, go to Doctor
#1, our usual health care provider, and get some meds. A sulfa antibiotic
and a new prescription for an inhaler used on occasion in the past. Take the
sulfa drug to kill the bacteria. Take the inhaler -- and start to throw up.
OK, lungs are wheezy, try the inhaler later on. Hours pass; inhale: throw
up. Wait until tomorrow and repeat one more time to make sure. Inhale;
hunch over sink, dry-heave. Three strikes; this med is out.
Doctor #1 is now on vacation. Go see Doctor #2. He checks out our lungs;
he's impressed, so impressed that he tells us to get a chest X-ray. Also, he
changes some of the meds. Gives us some white tablets to control the lung
inflammation. Gives us a different antibiotic because the sulfa one was
probably causing the gagging and vomiting. Stay with the same inhaler.
Take cab to hospital -- we cough too much while walking -- get zapped. X-ray
Dept. says lungs OK, return home in the afternoon and consume new antibiotic
and the white tablets. Wait until later for inhaler. Raspy lungs clear up
from white pills; hit the sack and sleep until midnight, catching up on much
needed rest.
Hey, feeling OK, for the first time in two weeks. Better squirt some inhaler
into lungs like Doctor #2 advised. OK, no vomiting... but wait a minute....
breathe-rasp, breathe-rasp, the freaking irritated lungs are back! Didn't an
asthmatic friend mention that this inhaler can cause problems? Find the
little box that contained the inhaler and take out the folded-up info sheet.
Scan through the fine print, coming across a note that the inhaler can
produce "paradoxical bronchospasm". Know what the first word means; kinda
sure about the second one but to be certain a quick check with the dictionary.
"Bronchospasm" is defined as "spasmodic contraction of the muscular lining of
the bronchi, as in asthma, causing difficulty in breathing." So, we have
this product to treat asthma. And what is a possible side effect? It can
cause asthmatic symptoms. Now that's "paradoxical" -- especially on those
occasions when, according to the fine print, "life threatening" bronchospasm
is produced.
Wheeze, rattle, wheeze -- can't sleep, the constricted air passages are too
loud. Shuddup, damn lungs. Take some more white tabs. Eventually fall into
a half-sleep...
Wake up, feel alright, get up and try to lead a normal routine. But after a
while -- wheeze, wheeze, cough, cough...
Call Doctor #3 who's covering for Doctor #2 who was covering for Doctor #1.
Get Rx for a different inhaler. Have tried a couple of doses and doing OK.
No wheeziness, no vomiting. Feeling better -- so far. If not sidelined by
another side effect, might be able to finally create a new semi-coherent
e-dition of APE.
Now into the third week with this relentless crap. Maybe this would've been
over by now if we hadn't encountered any "paradoxes".
Cliches to observe more than ever after this experience:
Read the fine print.
Question authority -- especially the medical kind.
* Forget the Bat Signal; Use the Cat Signal! *
So an environmental protester in Shasta Lake, California dresses up and
stages a sit-in on a smokestack, 12 stories up. Why? To promote awareness.
She claims the local fiber glass plant poses a health threat.
Does she dress up as Mother Earth? After all, that would be appropriate
symbolism, wouldn't it? Nope. She dresses up as Cat Woman from the Batman
comic book series.
Well, it did result in some attention from the press but -- forgive the catty
remark -- her choice of character was a mismatch. If you're gonna do an
environmentally-aware comic book character, dress up as Swamp Thing. Even
Poison Ivy would be a better choice.
But there's still a need for Cat Woman, right here in Plattsburgh, NY. We
got two issues that perfectly match the feline motif.
Years ago Mayor Volte-Face was a mere city councilman. He got some
pie-holes flapping when he wanted to strictly control all stray cats in the
city. Apparently he perceived them as some terrible threat to the physical
and mental health of the citizenry (unlike the stray dogs that shit all over
sidewalks and try to bite your ass off).
The second issue was reported in our last e-dition. Recently Mayor
Volte-Face refused to let a production of "The Vagina Monologues" be
advertised on a city-sponsored banner. After all, you can't have people
drive into the city and see the V word, can you?
The production went ahead without a city-sanctioned banner and was
well-received; all three nights sold out. God didn't strike this podunk with
fire from the sky or with a plague of paradoxical bronchospasms. Mayor
Volte-Face attended the opening night, but we haven't heard if he had changed
his mind about the V word on the city banner.
Enter Cat Woman. Surprise photo op at the mayor's office. She slinks in,
stretches herself out on the mayoral desk, and tickling Volte-Face under the
chin with her cute paw, she purringly asks him:
"So I hear that you don't like pussies...?"
* NENYland Boasts Criminal Master Minds *
Enjoy stories about criminal geniuses? Northeastern New York State has the
market cornered.
Item: Back in the days when the Plattsburgh Air Force Base was viable.
Robbery at the base exchange. Masked thief gets away with a bundle of
bundled bills. Some time later an airman visits a car dealer near the base,
makes his selection, and then pays for his purchase in cash -- bundled cash,
thousands of dollars, the wrapper on each wad with a military seal.
Item: An airwoman without a car but she needs transportation to raise cash
via hold-ups. The answer: take a cab late at night. Tell the cabbie to wait
outside the downtown supermarket, go in and do the "transaction", and then
away you go. That worked well. OK, she decides to do it again, this time
the uptown supermarket. But this cabbie gets suspicious when his fare asks
to be dropped off in the middle of nowhere after leaving the supermarket.
Gee, there must be a reason why professional robbers have their own cars --
and their own entrusted *drivers*...
Item: (No, we're not making up this stuff.) Woman found dead, her unharmed
baby left alone in a crib, blood all over. Death from whacks from an ax.
Ax murderer on trial. How did it happen? Not his fault, he explains. She
forced him to sell drugs. She was attacking him with the ax and he tried to
take it from her. She just fell on the ax. Again and again and again and
again... In his testimony he states there was blood all over, he was
concerned about the baby -- so what did he do? Ran out the door. Yup, that
helps the baby. But maybe this criminal wasn't so dumb: he only got seven
years in prison with his "she fell on the ax" alibi. The number of years
less than the total number of whacks. Remember: if you repeatedly shoot
another person, that person fell on the bullets.
If we recall correctly that last item also involved a character from the now
defunct Air Force Base. (Ask us if we have any regrets about its closure.)
Got more stories about criminal master minds of NENYland if you want 'em;
email us if you're interested. Or maybe we should do a series on legal
master minds like a DA who could only nail a mother-killing, baby-endangering
ax murderer with a seven year stint. In NENYland there's plenty of genius to
go around.
* Flash! This Just In From Our Dept. Of Medical Oversight *
Reviewing more of the info that came with our meds. That sulfa drug that
made us vomit: forgot to mention the main side effect.
To quote: "You should avoid prolonged or excessive exposure to direct and/or
artificial sunlight while taking this medicine."
Great. A vampiric allergy to healthy sunlight. So how do they define
"prolonged" or "excessive" exposure? One hour? Two hours? What happens
when the unstated limit is reached? Does the user crumble into dark gray
dust, thus saving on the expense of cremation? What about the avoidance of
garlic or holy water?
Let's take a look at those white tabs taken to control the lung irritation
caused by infection. Quote: "This medicine may lower your ability to fight
off infections. Avoid contact with people who have contagious diseases."
Really. The patient has a contagious disease; how do does he avoid contact
with himself? Even if his particular contagion in under control, does this
mean a different one has the opportunity to jump in and take over, adding
more weeks of illness?
Our best bet: smarten up, drop the meds, and encase ourselves in a large
plastic bubble with the appropriate life-support system. Better to be a
living bubble boy than a dead bubble brain.
=============================================================
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WHERE WE'RE AT: Anti-Press Ezine radiates from our Precision Reality Center.
We're presently entrapped in the alleged city of Plattsburgh, northeastern
New York State (NENYland), USA. ("Jeezum Crow, sheriff, my wife just fell on
the pitchfork a few times. I ran to the house to get a band-aid; she must've
wandered away and threw herself into the pigpen, fur sure.")
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