Taking “old men” pills

My dental hygienist is a sweet lady, mother of two, about my age. When I told her about my prescriptions due to my heart failure (yes, that’s what it’s called), she said, “You are taking old men pills.”

Little did she know how prophetic her words would be.

Just before Christmas, I made the mistake of swallowing my dad’s handful of pills instead of my own about dinner time.

Derek was home from Minot; Scott was working; and Belinda was ringing the bell at the Salvation Army in in south Bismarck.

I thought, no big deal, I’ll just gag myself and the pills will be gone.

Not so fast…the pills didn’t want to come up.

By this time, Derek is on the computer and the phone talking to the poison center.

Suddenly, I remembered something I learned in my childhood. I think it was my Grandma Van Dyke who told me that if you drink the raw white of the egg – called the albumen – it will make you throw up. So I separated an egg and drank the albumen. NOTHING.

So, thinking I might have gotten this wrong, I swallowed the raw egg yolk. Still nothing.

I then cracked another egg and swallowed that raw. Still nothing.

By this time, Derek had become frantic and decided the next course of action was to take me to the emergency room in Bismarck. We loaded up Grandpa and a way we went. On the way over, he was calling Scott and mom to tell them where we were going. Belinda’s shift was about over so she was to meet me at the ER.

Derek dropped me off at the hospital and then he and Grandpa went back to Mandan.

I walked into the ER only to find a sign that said, “Identification and insurance card required.”

I had neither with me. All I had was a handful of my dad’s pills in my stomach.

Luckily, the receptionist and my wife share the same Aunt Darlene. So she recognized me and allowed me to pass through the two iron doors that lead to the ER.

A nurse began quizzing me about the pills that I had swallowed and I told her that a few of them are actually the same pills that I take. But a couple of them are for Alzheimer’s, and I don’t have a prescription for them.

By this time, Belinda arrived and we were listening to a man behind a curtain curse on his cellphone. We’re not sure why he was in the ER, but he had a terrible mouth. As soon as he finished one call, he called someone else and started his tirade of curse words again.

In a few minutes the doctor arrived and he asked me to repeat the same information I had already given the nurse. The doctor was an older gentleman…say about 65. Anyway, he laughed when he heard what I had done and told me I would be fine and the Alzheimer’s pills would probably “remind me not to pee my pants.”

With that, he released me with the instructions not to take my dad’s pills anymore and not to double up on the pills that I had already taken.

The next morning, I awoke feeling no worse for having taken the wrong pills. And all would have been forgotten…except that I took the “memory” medicine and so haven’t forgotten this silly episode of my life.