Open Writing

Sally Field put me on to it when she advertised that ‘once a month’ pill for osteoporosis, bemoaning the fact that some of her friends have ‘to set aside time each week to take their osteoporosis pill.’ Gay and I looked at each other to make sure we had both heard the same things, and voiced out concerns about those poor people who had to interrupt their lives to pop down a pill once every hundred and sixty-eight hours.

How it must gall the poor dears to stop what they are doing and flip the lid off their pill jars or pop a pill out from behind windows of indestructible foil, insert the tablet into their buccal cavities, swig three or four ounces of water, and then make sure that the dose goes down the right hole and delivered to its correct destination. At first we thought it was downright daft to make ‘setting aside time’ to deposit a pill into one’s system as if it were onerous and demanding, the focus of a sales pitch.

It was time for research so that our opinions was not merely anecdotal, but actually had a scientific foundation, and so I mimed taking one of Sally’s tablets as Gay watched the second hand of my watch tick away my life. The mime was necessary because we did not have any of Ms Field’s magical tablets to hand, so the pretence was essential. To be strictly fair and scientific, I performed the play-acting bit at an easy, unhurried pace such as elderly arthritic and confused pill-poppers might attain. The whole pantomime took a measly eight seconds!

So much for the mensuration, and now for the calculation. With the aid of a giant calculator positioned under the kitchen light to drive the photoelectric cell, I performed a series of about ten different methodological computations.

The first nine passes were vain searches for a proper method of proceeding to multiply eight seconds by the number of weeks in twenty years and then reconvert the total into hours and minutes. I was successful on the tenth attempt. There is something enchanting about mathematical formulations - they say - but I don’t know what the heck it is. How can something so difficult be enchanting?

Anyway, according to ?r2 multiplied by E=MC2, if a person lived twenty years following diagnosis and took a dose of the drug every week, the time consumed would total two hours and thirty-one minutes. That might not sound like a lot spread over a score of years, but, Sally hints with her Gidget smile and twinkly eyes, retirees have better things to do with that time.

Sally’s treatment takes only eight seconds a month, and that consumes a mere three-quarters of an hour in twenty years, leaving the bustling hordes of osteoporotics with and hour and three quarters more time to spend on critical and exciting life experiences than those poor blind blockheads who elect for a weekly dose.

You will have heard the grand chorus of the hapless who need these medicines, emitting bleats of complaint about the unfairness, craving for an extra twenty-four seconds a month to distribute on exhilarating and rewarding pursuits, grinding out their interminable wail of, "These darn pills take so much time to swallow!"

However, having now had time to reflect on the ill-starred, I have come to the conclusion that it is no laughing matter and ought not to be made a subject for semi-ribald amusement by we who do not have to take the blessed stuff. I say ‘we’ although Gay has just been diagnosed as an osteopeniac, so the ‘we’ is narrowed down by a good fifty percent and in strictly scientific terms, and, remember, this is a scrupulously scientific analysis so that, by applying Boyle’s Second Law of Pillodynamics, the ‘we’ is converted into ‘she’ for the purposes of further experimentation.

The objectivity of this study is slightly marred by the scientific fact that ‘she’s’ physician has prescribed ‘she’ a weekly administration of the magic potion, thus rendering a slightly subjective tone to our overarching concern in the field of bone mass density.

However, and I would prefer it if no one mentioned this to my beloved, I have observed her actually doing nothing for periods of eight seconds at least once a week over the past twelve months, so perhaps this is a divine indicator that a QWK régime will fill up that regular slack period in her life and make it seem as if she enjoys one long, level, and unvarying pattern of activity that a monthly dose would disrupt by leaving her with a twenty-four second remainder of unemployed time each month for the rest of her life.

I will not be sending a summary of these findings to the ebullient Sally Field because although medicines are to be used for healing, and although she might be accused by some of spreading information of dubious provenance that could lessen quality of life as it strengthens bones, I also believe that we scientists should do nothing to make people unhappy. Even when they make silly remarks without having taken the time and effort to do some real research to weight the benefits or disadvantages of a particular medication.

So, sail on and sally forth, Sally, and see how you like all the unoccupied time that your dosage programme imposes on you, and see how you envy those whose eight seconds a week are spent gainfully employed in a good cause: the improvement of health and the end of wasted time!

Copyright (C) 2007 - Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED