What Doesn’t Kill You...

My first encounter with medicine, at least the first I can remember, was liquid penicillin flavored with a bubble gum additive to make it “palatable” (a word I came to learn meant, “It won’t kill you, but it will make you wish you were”). If I close my eyes and go back to that moment in my memory I can still smell it and it still activates the gag reflex in the back of my throat. 

“Drink this, it will make you feel better,” my mother persuaded me with a deceptive assurance that I’m certain was rivaled only by the serpent himself as he whispered in the Garden, “Eat this and you will be like gods.” To this day I think this is the only time she ever lied to me. Three times a day she would coax me into choking down this elixir, each time promising it was necessary to cure the strep throat that was keeping me from school. Convincing an already reluctant six year old boy to repeatedly drink awful liquid so he can return to school is a testament to her persuasive powers.

Not long after I would be introduced to the equally dreadful and magical Robitussin and Vicks Formula 44 cough syrups, both of which tasted like a black licorice and cherry flavored Kool Aid, but they did wonders for a cough (likely because they were essentially cherry flavored ninety proof whiskey). Then there was the eye dropper administered liquid Tylenol for fevers and Vick’s VapoRub for chest colds, which simultaneously burned and was cold. 
      Perhaps my favorite medicines were Chloraseptic and Luden’s Wild Cherry Flavored Cough Drops (only surpassed by the rare treat that was Sucrets). Chloraseptic tasted good and eased the pain of a raw throat instantly, although its effects were short lived, while Luden’s were basically candy that you were allowed to eat during school and church because they were cleverly called “lozenges”, making them highly coveted contraband in the elementary school black market.

Not all of my ailments were internal and eventually I would learn how my mother could magically transform painful “boo-boos” into really cool scars with things like Isopropyl Alcohol and Camphophenique. Those cool scars came at a painful price. As she explained the antiseptic properties while pouring (a technique I later learned was a clever way to distract a nervous boy) I imagined there were microscopic soldiers setting fire to the germs in my cuts and abrasions, because that is exactly what it felt like. Later she would introduce me to the chemistry experiment worthy effervescent power of Hydrogen Peroxide, which had the same benefits as alcohol without the horrible burning (I’ll always wonder why she didn’t just start with that). Speaking of burning, my first sunburns were soothed by rubbing Aloe Vera on my back and shoulders or spraying Bactine or Solarcaine if the burn was too painful to touch. The first time my mother broke off an aloe branch and squeezed out the soothing gel onto my raw shoulders I was convinced she was secretly a witch or shaman using earth magic, a fact that was later confirmed by her introducing “monkey blood” (iodine) as a treatment plan.

It was at this early age that I began to learn that medicine is meant to make you better, although it seems like it might half kill you in the process. That’s just the price of admission. When I grew up and had to begin taking prescription drugs it sometimes seemed like medicine was just intended to kill you. When I see the commercials on television or read the paperwork that comes with my prescriptions, the list of possible side effects reads like a Stephen King novel, except Stephen King novels are fiction and the side effects of these medicines are frighteningly real.

Now, as an adult, I have learned there are some medicines that aren’t designed to make you better at all, but simply to ease the pain as disease kills you. Morphine and benzodiazepines aren’t really about making you better as much as they are about making not getting better bearable.

Nearly a year ago our family crowded into a small room in Sanctuary Hospice House in my wife’s hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi. We were gathered in the same room we occupied eight years earlier as we sat with her dying mamaw, only this time it was her papaw slowly  dying as regularly administered morphine kept the pain at bay. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, in-laws, friends and grandchildren all sat together as the hours turned into days. For a long time we sat in the awkward silence that only impending death can create, with only the hum of the air conditioner making a sound, but eventually the pangs of  grief and exhaustion gave birth to laughter.

Somewhere in the late night hours, between the nurses routine checks, someone started a sentence with, “Do you remember that time....”, and off we went, all of us embarking on a trip down memory lane. Long held secrets between cousins were revealed to shocked parents and in turn some were told by parents that stunned their naive children. Stories were retold that had been shared so many times through generational tellings they had become polished, refined, and perfected like so many smooth stones resting in flowing water for decades. A sort of greatest hits of our family history. 

Sitting in the dark, in the middle of the night, everyone in that room was struggling to catch their breath. Papaw was struggling to take his final breaths, and the rest of us were laughing until we hyperventilated, trying our best to go on living in the face of his certain death. The Bible tells us that “a merry heart doeth good like medicine” and although the hurt we were feeling in that room was killing us, laughter truly was the best medicine. The reality of his death hurt. Eventually it was because we hurt that we laughed, but ultimately we laughed until it hurt, and we continued laughing until he didn’t hurt anymore.