Cialis, When She's Ten Feet Tall

“One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small”

   And far from not doing much of anything at all, a third pill may very well cause minor gastric hemorrhaging, impaired breathing, loss of appetite, night sweats, convulsions, unwanted facial hair, sudden vision loss, diarrhea, chest pains, nausea during sex, seizures, swelling of the face, neck and lips, TB, Lymphoma, Hepatitis B, sudden cardiac arrest and death. Not to mention everybody's personal favorite, the priapic erection lasting four hours or more!

  

My demographic has snuck up on me over the last fifteen or twenty years, coinciding roughly with the advent of TV pharmaceutical advertizing on a scale that might put Coke and Pepsi to shame. Come to think of it, I don't recall the last time I saw a Coke commercial; maybe they run those on MTV or Comedy Central along with condom and acne ads. On MSNBC, CNN, HBO, PBS, FOX and any other channel that presumes to cater to those older than eighteen, however, the prevailing sponsors seem to be engaged in a race to the graveyard.  While we were giggling at the image of Bob Dole's passionate embrace of the incipient Viagra years ago, lobbyists got hot and bothered, networks succumbed to Pharma's blandishments and spewed their nocturnal emissions over TV's turgid waters, spawning the horrors we suffer through today. Indeed, watching TV in mixed company can be pretty uncomfortable, particularly if children are about and one might have to answer the question, “ Daddy, what's vaginal lubricant?” or, “ Mommy, can we ask my doctor if I'm healthy enough for sex?”

   My brother and I recently found ourselves cataloging and comparing aches, pains and procedures – an irresistible and time-honored part of the aging process – using my father's precipitous decline as some sort of predictive benchmark. Where once we might have pondered where Dad was at our age in terms of ambition, opportunity or success, we now might look for clues as to when to expect debilitating arthritis, hammertoes, melanoma, colonic polyps and stroke. Some of this angst is natural, traits being genetic and hereditary, but a good portion of it can be blamed on the media. And the great irony, of course, is that notwithstanding my own relentless pain – I pretty much have to ask Suzanne to open jars for me now – I have absolutely no intention of ever asking my doctor about Celebrex, Humira, or any other televised wonder-drug whose side effects might include sudden death or oily discharge. They've lost me for good and may as well put my portion of their ad money into R&D.

   I had a doctor some years back who prescribed two familiar drugs and baby aspirin as a daily regime. It's been my good fortune, thus far, not to have seen ads for these. The prescriptions were prophylactic, he said, based more on my father's history than on any real or present danger in my own case. It was a moment of transmutation, akin to being told I needed bifocals, and I resisted. I had the scrips filled and put them in a drawer for two weeks. One day I bought a weekly pill box at the Dollar Store and arranged the three pills in that. At some point I began taking them. If the pill box is not in plain sight on the kitchen counter every morning, though, I can't be expected to remember. Which points up another potential problem.......

   What day is it today?