Trading Meds with my Dog: the Pitfalls of a Dilapidated Memory

I hate it when I forget to take my Tamoxifen. Worse is being unable to remember if I’ve taken it or not. It makes me feel like a demented old hag (or perhaps just a regular old Used Bagge), my brain all crumbly and spent, those bong hits coming back to torment me from my Iron Lungs days. Ha ha, you did kill too many brain cells. So, I pace, I try to reconstruct my day, try to remember grabbing the bottle, unscrewing the cap, popping the pill into my mouth with a swig of water, draining the glass. But I can’t. Did I take it? Did I take it? It might have been yesterday, after all, or another day. What’s to distinguish this time from another?

I have to remember to give my dog, Daisy, her Phenobarbital, too. They are round, white tablets, like the Tamoxifen, but smaller, and she gets two at a time, once in the morning and once in the evening. I just get one Tamoxifen, at midday. Sometimes I accidentally take two Tamoxifen in my hand and begin to put them in my mouth. Oops! Sometimes I grab the Phenobarbital bottle instead, and start to dump a few into my hand. Ooops! Those plastic medicine bottles look pretty much the same, and if it weren’t for the doggies on the top of Daisy’s, I’d really be screwed. But just the same, I don’t always take notice of the little doggies on the top, or the fact that my bottle is orange, Daisy’s is green, and am often left wondering if I have given Daisy her Phenobarbital or if I have slipped her a couple of Tamoxifen instead. Sometimes I wonder if I should try taking her Phenobarbital instead of my Tamoxifen, a swap. I could use a sedative every now and then.

Initially, I took my Tamoxifen in the morning, along with copious amounts of supplements all intended to make me think I can control my destiny, my health. Vitamin D, because it just rains and rains and rains and there is no way we’re getting enough from the sun this summer, let alone in the winter. A big fat multivitamin, a big fat B complex, good for de-stressing. A bundle of cal/mag, keeping the bones strong in the wake of the Tamoxifen, which sucks the calcium out and sets you up for osteoporosis. Extra magnesium citramate, to help me absorb all that calcium. Evening primrose oil, flax seed oil, fish oil. Anti-inflammatories, all. CoQ10. Why not CoQ11? Milk thistle extract, to keep my liver healthy. Daisy gets that, too, in her dinner. And my latest addition: Glucasomine, to help with all the joint pain. And then, of course, the Tamoxifen, in the plastic orange bottle, no doggies on top. It was infinitely more easy to remember to take it when it was part of the pack. Sure, what’s one more? But I was hot flashing like mad at night while I tried to sleep, whipping off the covers, then my clothes, and finally, wishing I could shave my head, lose the long, thick hair that enveloped me like a Russian Ushanka, a brick oven, a fat cat, and stop the damn sweating. My breast doctor suggested taking the Tamoxifen at noontime, see if that helped. It did. The hot flashes, for the most part, stopped torturing me at night; instead, they crept up all of a sudden at various times during the day, seizing me in the car, windows down, quick, or while grocery shopping, sending me running into the ice cream section for relief, or trying to teach the boys some Spanish, estoy muy caliente! I dress in layers, and a tank top is always my first one, just in case I have to strip down to the bare essentials. What else is a girl to do?

So, now, instead of losing sleep over the relentless thump of hot flashes that yanks me from my better dreams to set me afloat in a sea of sweat, I lose my head over trying to remember if I’ve taken the damn thing. Did I? Did I? I can’t remember, I can’t remember! I curse myself. Why am I so stupid?? What if I think I didn’t take it, and I take it, and I actually did take it, and so have now taken two in one day, what will happen to me then? There are silly, insidious places in my head where I try, desperately, not to go, but go I do, imagining all the horrible that might be.

I’ve tried to be systematic and smart and deliberate about it: marking it on a calendar, using sticker charts (yeah, that went over big), and finally, putting the container of Tamoxifen in the middle of the kitchen counter in the morning during my supplement feast so I would see it later and remember, remember! to take it, and then, once I’ve taken it, return it to the masses of bottles to the side, so I would remember, remember! that I had, in fact, taken it. But sometimes I will see it there amongst its more alternative friends, and I’ll think to myself: perhaps I didn’t take it at all, perhaps I only forgot to put it into the middle of the counter, and it hasn’t moved since yesterday. Two things to remember: take the meds, then remember that you’ve taken your meds. Shit. Why is life so complicated?

Daisy, it seems, remembers. She comes into the kitchen after breakfast and nudges me, stares me down with her ridiculously big pleading eyes until I say, “Oh, Daisy, are you ready for your medication?” Which means to her, “Oh, Daisy, would you like some chicken?” I learned early on that the only way she’d take it, without spitting out the little tablets onto the kitchen floor in distaste, was to give her a piece of chicken first, then open her jaw, toss the little buggers in, tell her to “swallow, swallow!” in a high, sing-songy voice that promises something more fabulous (a walk, a ride in the car, a chance to chase the ball, the Frisbee, a present to open, someone to bark at up on the road) than what she’s getting, and then quickly give her a second piece of chicken, which she’ll take greedily and which helps the Phenobarbital go down. She is not tricked as much as is in on the game herself, knowing full well that I’ve given her foul-tasting nasty little pills in between something delicious. It’s worth it, obviously. She’s willing to put up with it. Plus, I think she likes being a little spaced out on Phenobarbital. Takes the edge off her usual frenzy of friendliness and anxiety. Makes those thunderstorms seem more like squabbling neighbors than an all out assault from the gods above. Easy peasy. Doesn’t everyone deserve something that helps them feel a little bit better about everything?

I don’t always remember to give Daisy her meds. Sometimes I go to bed and am haunted by bad dreams telling me I have forgotten to do something vitally, critically important. I spring to, half-awake, half-entranced by sleep, and suddenly, my mind is absolutely clear: I know exactly what I have forgotten to do, and I can‘t for the life of me understand why I wouldn‘t remember it in the morning. It is there, right there, in my mind. I see it. Oh, yes, I think, I did forget that. Forgot to take my Tamoxifen. Give Daisy her Phenobarbital. Answer that e-mail. Teach the boys about appositives. Or, something with more catastrophic consequences. Something so important that the darkness surrounding me seems filled with demons and goblins and mean spirits scolding me, pulling me deep into an underworld of regret that spits me out, a malcontent insomniac wondering when the sun will come up. And yet, in the light of the morning, my mind is as dark as the night, and I have no recollection of what it is I forgot. All I know is that I have remembered to forget something, again. That I am pathetic. That my brain is a slippery mess of curly-Qs, nonsensical, hollow tubes leading to nowhere. That I am surely doomed when I am an old biddie and have more than just Tamoxifen to take, more than just Phenobarbital to give to my dog. By then, perhaps, I will be on Phenobarbital, and Daisy will be on Tamoxifen, and she’ll be duping me with chicken, tossing the pills down my throat, Swallow! Swallow!

Oy.