Sorry I've been gone so long. Oh? You didn't notice? Cool! Then, HI! I've missed you!
But I was on some really groggy medication, and I literally slept for 12 hours the other night. It was glorious, and I could have done it again starting at midday. It's not even a painkiller or anything fun. It's an antiviral medication with a sleepy side effect that I deemed "worth it" because I really hate cold sores.
I'm not sure why God allows people to get cold sores INSIDE THEIR NOSES, and I've spent a lot of time contemplating the existence of such a cruel overlord. Think of all the people in Japan without access to a pharmacy right now! Not even for a little natural disaster makeup survival kit of lip gloss, clear polish, and Maybelline Great Lash. (Maybe it's natural disaster, maybe it's Maybelline.)
(Too soon? OK, well, if you chuckled, now you kind of have to help because of your crushing guilt. The American Red Cross says medical needs are high. Text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation to help our friends in Japan. You remember them. They gave us technology. I think we can afford $10.)
Life is so hard.
For instance, the soul-piercing embarrassment I must face when getting my cold sore medication that is also used to treat genital herpes makes me doubt a loving God. If my cold sore was visible, like on my lip like a normal person, it wouldn't be so bad. My nostril cold sores are not always visible but they're also not on my crotch, and that's a distinction I would like everyone behind the pharmacy counter to understand - an especially difficult task because of the aforementioned not-obvious facial cold sore and also because the doctor who prescribes my Valtrex is my well-known local Ob/Gyn.
Maybe pharmacists think they have some sort of secret pharmacy code that laymen can't understand, but I understand it. So, I'm pretty sure, can all these people with walkers loitering around the pharmacy counter waiting for their prescription poop pills. So, even when she yells about the generic name for something, like, everyone knows what it is. Ends with -icillin? Bacterial infection, but nobody's judging even though it could be for the clap.
But everyone associates Valtrex with genital herpes commercials. Everyone. Even I do it, and I take it for a completely different reason. So, when the pharmacist starts yelling about my prescription using its scientific name, I get a little nervous about Oxygen Tank Hank snickering from the disabled person chair next to the counter.
Invariably, I walk up to the counter and wait a lengthy three full minutes for the pharmacy tech who looks strikingly similar to Lara Jill Miller as the adorable tomboy Samantha on the NBC series Gimme a Break! Even though she meets my eyes when I walk up to the counter, she must continue muttering with the pharmacist, who acknowledges nary a soul until that person is a problem and only then with a level of angst and contempt that should only be allowed sanitation workers who had to unjam the sewer pipe outside your house that one time you thought "what's the worst that could happen?" and spent the entire seven days of your period flushing nighttime absorbency feminine hygiene pads down the toilet.
So when Samantha from Gimme a Break! finally descends from the pharmacist's work space, I'm already on the edges of patience. Then, I have to wait while Samantha, who looked completely normal from afar, works her Narnia backward-knee legs down the side steps, whinnies and trots over to the cash register. I tell her my name, she stomps twice, breathes through her gap teeth and turns around to look through the alphabetical bins for my prescription.
It's never there, so she checks the Q and R bins in case it was misfiled and then asks the pharmacist, who then squints at me, drops her reading glasses which swing from her flowered eyeglass chain, and shouts, "I called Dr. TwoFingers [well-known local Ob/Gyn] to see if he wanted to prescribe something else because your insurance company doesn't want to pay for that valacyclovir. Insurance will pay for the acyclovir but not valacyclovir, so I called Dr. TwoFingers to see if he wanted to give you the other kind."
What I want to say is "Please, please say Dr. TwoFingers and valacyclovir one more time, because I'm pretty sure the 20-year-olds buying condoms and specialty lube three aisles away didn't hear you the first two times."
Instead, I embark on a lengthy, pointless monologue about how - hahaha - it's OKzies because I just have this super painful, miniscule cold sore inside my nose which, in case any of the senior citizens were curious, are absolutely not in or around my nether regions because I am a good, Christian woman who hasn't slept with anyone except her husband (you're welcome, Mom) since she got married (sorry, Mom), and anyhoozles, I have a very healthy vaginal life all-in-all, and just so you know, the only reason an Ob/Gyn prescribed it is because one time, when I delivered twins (in wedlock, and a-thank-you) I got a cold sore while he was checking on us in the hospital, and he just went ahead and wrote me a prescription, and ever since then I just call him. Oh, I'm so easy-breezy, aren't I? Certainly not like someone with an ongoing need for this medication.
"How much is it without insurance, then?" I ask, expecting it to be $400 if insurance won't cover it.
"It's 58.50," she says, and in the rage that follows immediately after the pause of shock, I somehow manage not to rip my shirt open, scramble over the stupid raised counter and rip that plush eyeglass chain right off her neck.
Because, really? Based on the assumed $30 copay for the tier-III prescriptions, I'm guessing the difference between her not shouting out my easily misunderstood prescription to half the senior population of our community and keeping it to herself is, like, $28.50.
Stab, stab. Stab.
"I'll take it," I say, and she rolls her eyes at me.
Half-Goat Samantha's mustache whiskers twitch as she fails to stifle her giggle-snorts. I've had enough.
If I were good at this sort of thing, I'd put that centaur in her motherfucking place.
"Listen here, Hot to Trot," I would say. "I wouldn't laugh at you if you got cold sores on your back hump, and I certainly wouldn't imply that you had them on your genitals. And not only because I find revolting the mental image of you having sex. I wouldn't imply it because I have empathy, something your kind should learn from we non-magical creatures. Good day, forest spirit. And the same to your chemical overlord up there behind the raised counter. A-good day."
Instead I pay my $58.50 at the register Nell Carter's cloven-hoofed afterbirth can't seem to manage, and avoid the prying eyes of all the old people.
This is why my occasional cold sore is more degrading than actual genital herpes. And that is how I spent my summer vacation. Love, Sarah P
