Welcome to Alamaroo's Pharmacy

It has recently come to my attention that I am the official pill-pusher of my community. It's not as bad as it sounds. I promise. In reality, I belong to a community of overachievers who love to overcommit themselves such that they don't have time to sleep. Lately, I've found myself threatening to drug them all to sleep. And then I started thinking about all the different drugs I have on hand, and I decided to take a little inventory. How many prescription and over the counter items do you think I found? Sixteen (not counting three empty bottles that I just threw away).

Shall we take a lookie-loo?

In the category of pain relief and inflammation, we have:
1. Huge bottle of ibuprofen. Word to the wise: just use 800mg (four tablets) for extreme pain or inflammation. I hate going to the doctor to be given a prescription for 800mg ibuprofen tablets when I could've taken that on my own.
2. Bottle of Bayer aspirin. I never take it. I have persistent trouble sleeping, so before my sleeping pill days began, I was told that taking aspirin before bed would help. False.
3. Prescription prednisone tablets (oral steroid) that I never finished taking for unexplained chest pain that was, at the time of prescription, suspected to be a sprained muscle.

In the category of skin care, we have:
3. Lac-Hydrin, a prescription 12% ammonium lactate lotion. (My mother informed me while I was home for Thanksgiving that this is actually the same lotion they used on the residents at the nursing home where she worked for ten years. I am truly an old old woman.)
4. Prescription 2.5% hydrocortisone cream. (Topical steroid.)
5. Prescription .05% clobetasol propionate cream. (Another topical steroid.)

In the category of drops, we have:
6. Prescription "neo/polymyxin/hc" ear drops. I can't remember what the abbreviations are for, which disappoints me because I like medical terminology. For instance, "myocardial infarction" is so much more fun than "heart attack." Come on, who hasn't at least said "stat!" after watching ER? That's what I thought.
7. Bausch & Lomb Opcon-A allergy eye drops. These things are amazing. Really. If you have problems with allergies to cats, dogs, the air, your significant other who resembles a monkey, your imagination, whatever it may be, you should try these things.

In the category of undisclosed, we have:
8. Almost empty prescription bottle.
9. Empty prescription bottle that has one refill remaining on it that I just forgot to get before returning to school for the semester.
10. One full refill of the prescription.
[Isn't that just too cute? Look at me trying to be secretive and mysterious while dumping my medicine cabinet onto the internet. Aww. . .]

In the category of allergy medication, we have:
11. Generic Claritin, a.k.a. loratadine. Get the 24-hour kind. It's great. Truly non-drowsy. It works even better if you remember to take it, which is often a problem for me. Memory is not my strong suit.
12. Generic benadryl. This was from my pre-loratadine days, but I can't remember whether it also had something to do with my insomnia. Seriously. It could easily be used as a sleeping pill.
[If you wanna know something sad, I know that I have another generic brand of benadryl in my bedroom at home. How much allergy medicine can one person need?]

Which brings us to our final category: Sleeping pills:
13. EuroCalm, made with valerian root, passion flower (which, surprisingly enough, also makes an appearance in my hairspray), chamomile, and hawthorn. Purchased two years ago and never taken on a regular basis, which eliminated the point entirely. It's an herbal supplement, which supposedly helps you sleep if taken every day. Remind me to tell you about the village witch doctor from whom I bought it.
14. Generic Unisom. I bought this at the end of the summer, knowing that the transition from a third-shift schedule back to that of a student would be somewhat difficult. The great thing about this medication (diphenhydramine HCl) is that they claim you need eight hours to sleep if you're going to take it, but in reality you need only five or six hours, which is much more suited to my schedule.
15. Lunesta. This sleeping pill has been pretty useless for me. You truly need eight hours for this sucker, and I just don't get that much time for sleep (at least consecutively--nap time totally doesn't count).
16. Sonata. My favorite. You only need four hours for this. And you don't wake up groggy at all. It's truly beautiful.


There you have it. Perhaps we'll take inventory of the first aid supplies at a later date. (The vitamins aren't worth mentioning because I have never remembered to take them, which might explain why I couldn't last as a vegan.) Just know that I do have a large bottle of saline solution from the hospital. I don't know why it matters. It just strikes me as odd. It's at least slightly normal to have band-aids and gauze and coban and hydrogen peroxide and antibiotic ointment. . ., but saline?