I Will Remember You, Part III, the Patients...

I have a list.You do not want to be on this list. If you are on this list, you have made my life miserable on several occasions, and the sight of you standing at my counter causes my soul to sink into my shoes .

People make the list for a variety of reasons. There are the pharmacist stalkers who have a boat load of questions every time, no matter how busy we are. Questions are ok, unless they are just for the sake of asking something. There are the crabby, nasty patients, who never seem to be happy with anything. There are the oddballs, who request things like no staples on the bag, no bag, no receipt, or special bottles because they can't use the ones everybody else does. There are dirty old (and young) men who say inappropriate things, and the stool gazers and worry warts that also say inappropriate things. And show us inappropriate things!  And there are people who have a ton of meds or take care of someone who does. They earn a spot on the list, not because of anything they have done, but because every time they come in there is some kind of hassle.

I told one of my technicians that every time one of these people goes elsewhere, for whatever reason, I breathe a sigh of relief, and do a little happy dance in private. I said that sometimes reading an obituary for one of these people makes me involuntarily breathe a sigh of relief, which is sick and wrong, but honest!
She told me I was awful, and I told her if she tried to tell me her soul did not emit an involuntary "WHEW"
when it knew there was one less tormentor coming in, then she was either a liar or a saint.

The most endearing patients to me are the ones that find a way to use humor in the face of their difficulties. While some people fuss and fume over every little inconvenience or perceived slight, these people seem to take it on the chin and keep their dignity intact. We had one little sweet lady who came in with her husband to pick up his medicine, and we had to tell them it was going to cost them some horrendous amount of money.  She turned to her little husband and said in her southern drawl, ''well, Clifford, honey, I think it would be cheaper to just shoot ýe''. Of course, he just smiled.

Then there was the little old man who had to go in for a biopsy to check for prostate cancer, and he said he asked the doctor if it was going to be painful, and the doctor said ''well, Charlie, did you ever fall astraddle of a board fence?'' He laughed and said it wasn't a true story, but I suspect there might have been an element of truth (and fear) in there.

There are certain mannerisms, actions or statements that have come from people over the years that I don't completely understand. There are the old men who ''flick'' their credit card at us, or toss their money, including coins, on the counter at us. Was it cool in 1945 to throw things at the cashier John Wayne? ''Hey barkeep, here's two bits for me and my pardner a couple 'o whiskeys...'' toss, clink, bottoms up!''

''Well, there's fifty cents, if you never get anymore'' What???

''Who comes in here more than me?'' (Well, everybody that works here for starters!)

"I probably own half this company by now'' (pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Trump, your hair looks different in person!)

When you work in the same location for a long time, you see the rise and fall of humanity in this little microcosmos. When you see somebody go through something that takes them from the picture of health to the depths of despair, it scares the living shit out of you. Fortunately, it sometimes goes the other way. The girl who used to rock back and forth and arrange our vitamins in front of the counter for us, comes in bright eyed and coherent because they finally got her medications right. The girl who went through drive thru, who I remarked would be pretty if she had teeth, lo and behold comes through with a new set of choppers. The old man who wasn't supposed to make it comes in and says his cancer is in remission.

Aside from the generalizations I could make about my patients, there are a few characters who have earned their own special place in my memory. I already mentioned the "Hall of Fame'' members in an earlier post. Here are some more, names changed to protect the innocent:

"Annie McDuff'' the little Russian lady who wore a head scarf, had a mole with a hair growing out of it, and liked to drink '''wodka", heh, heh, heh, (picture a less than glamorous Natasha from Bullwinkle).

 "Artie Jones'',   my book buddy, who always had interesting reads to recommend, and who taught me that Somerset Maugham, is pronounced "Summerset Mom" not ''Summerset Maugam".

''Mary Steeple" who asked my pharmacy manager "Cora" if she could pray for her, and when she told her ''yes'' proceeded to put her hand on "Cora's" head and prayed right there in the store in a loud voice ''OH LORD, HELP THIS WOMAN!!!!!'' This same lady was in a constant fight with the lady in the apartment next to her, mainly because she put a glass to the wall and listened to her conversations.

"Beth'',  who told me her parents house smelled so bad, because the neighbor lady had burned her dead horses in a field,  and the smell drifted down to their house, and her Mom and Dad were so mad, which I believed and told several people before her Mom came in and scolded her for telling me the story, which turned out to be a complete fabrication.

"Bill Moody'' who came in to the pharmacy I worked at, and who also swam at the ''Y'' when I lifeguarded, and said "I have a crush on you, do you have a crush on me?'', and told me if I ignored him, he would ''come in every Wednesday and Friday and splash you, and that is not all I will do, either!''. The poor guy apparently got mad at some lady and went into the racquetball court and took her racquetball, which landed him in the local mental hospital where ''I can't have my tape player, or my tapes, or anything''.

There are a few memories of people who were more ''notorious'' than notable, like the girl who called me a ''white ass ho'' because I rang up the little old lady who had been waiting on her prescription for an hour before ringing up the candy bars she and her friend had tossed on the counter. Or the creepy old man who was scary looking , like Frankenstein, when he was mad, and even creepier when he smiled. And who did not want staples in his bag, or a bag for that matter, or a receipt, either. And who knew what kind of car each and every one of us drove.  Or the guy who threw the phone over the counter onto the floor when his doctor's office refused to ok an early refill on his pain medicine.

Ahhhh. such lovely memories! Actually, they truly are. I have more than enough to last a lifetime!

BP