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Friday - Noon

I unveil my plan to my office manager. As soon as she hears the v-word she tells me to go home. She tells me Vicodin affects different people in different ways and since one of my primary duties is handling money and sensitive information, I should just go home. The fact that I’ve never taken Vicodin before doesn’t help my case at all. Three-Day weekend!

I trot over to Rite-Aid thinking I’ll be in and out in 15. Manning the pharmacy are two women, one Asian and one Hispanic. “May I help you?” asks the Hispanic woman. Her accent tells me English was not her first language and perhaps not even her second. I hand her my prescriptions and she tells me I’ll have to wait half an hour to get them filled. Half an hour!?! How can it take that long to fill a prescription? It’s a bottle of ear drops and 30 Vicodin. That’s a Vicodin a minute.

I ask her if there’s any way she can speed it up because right now I’d cut off my own ear if it were an option. The Asian woman, who also probably did not receive her primary education in America , tells me in broken Engrish that it takes that long because they have to call my insurance company and verify everything. Again, I don’t see how that can take thirty minutes but she’s Asian and science has proven that Asians have superior mathematical capabilities so I really cannot argue with her. “I’ll be back,” I say in my best Schwarzenegger.

I’m about a third of the way through an issue of Blender (Jay Z’s back!) when I hear “Dixon to the pharmacy” on the PA. I head back to the pharmacy and the Hispanic woman tells me it’s going to cost $290 for the bottle of ear drops. Yes, you read that right. A two and a nine and a zero and then a decimal point. Before I can jump over the counter and rip her throat out with my teeth, she tells me there is no generic version of these ear drops and my insurance doesn’t cover them.

She asks me if I would like her to call my doctor and see if there’s something else that can be proscribed. “Please,” I say, resisting the urge to ask her if a blowjob comes with the $290 price tag. I wonder if it’s ever happened where there’s been a similar situation and the person has responded, “No, $290 for 5 mL of ear drops is just fine. Actually, can you charge me more?” I can be quite the cynic at times, especially when my head feels like the guy who got his head crushed in a vise by Joe Pesci in Casino. She tells me it will be a few more minutes and I can sit in the waiting area if I’d like. I take a seat and deflate.

Five minutes later I hear “Dixon to the pharmacy.” That’s kind of odd, since I’m actually at the pharmacy and am maybe ten feet away from her and can clearly see her talking and we’re actually making eye contact as she’s saying “Dixon to the pharmacy.” I take three steps over to the counter and she tells me the doc changed the prescription and the drops will only cost me a low-low-low $90.

If this was any other day I’d raise all kinds of hell and call CIGNA and then call immigration and get the Hispanic woman taken care of, but this is not any other day. I probably would have paid the original $290 if push came to shove. I’m desperate; I need this shit and I need it yesterday. I fork over my Mastercard and get my meds. Drugs in hand, I bid the two ladies a polite, sincere “thank you” with a smile and make my way out to the parking lot. Those two ladies are my new best friends.

I find myself sitting in the parking lot of Rite Aid putting in my million dollar eardrops. I sit there waiting the necessary three minutes with my head tilted to the side, staring at my bottle of Vicodin. All I want to do is take one but I must resist the urge. I’ve got an empty stomach and half an hour of driving to do so there’s really no telling what will happen if I do. The pill could hit me halfway home and for all I know I’d get high and wind up handcuffed to the dresser in a hotel room in Long Beach . Besides, I’ve suffered this long so what’s another thirty minutes? As soon as I get home, it’s a bagel and two Vicodins.

I try my best to play with my two puppies to kill the time. One of them manages to jump up and innocently nip at my infected ear. As much as I want to pick her up and chuck her through my glass sliding door, I am unable to do so because I find myself once again curled up in a fetal position on my living room floor with both hands on my right ear. The paralyzing pain actually seems to stop time. The puppies remind me that time is indeed still moving by licking every part of my head not covered by my hands. I don’t know if they can sense I’m in pain and their natural instincts are to lick my wound, or maybe they just want to play. All I know is there is absolutely nothing I can do to keep them from licking me, so I lay there with my hand on my ear and accept it. It’s like a twisted horror movie.

And then the Vicodin hits. Shazam! Things start to get a little blurry from here on out. My only real observation of the effects of Vicodin is that it takes you out of your head, if that makes any sense. I can still tell my ear is throbbing but the pain is not making it through to my brain to be processed, kind of like watching TV on mute. I spend the entire day in a drug-induced limbo, popping a Vicodin here and there. I’m hesitant to take one whenever it starts to hurt since the bottle explicitly says not take more than eight in 24 hours, and I could clearly use more. I opt to take one every three hours so it averages out.

to be continued…

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.