More on being seventy and what it's like.

I don't know why this urge to write came in the middle of the night but I know one of the factors. With recent surgery, I am taking all kinds of new medications. Now, I know that people take medications at every age, and I am not unique, but I have one here in my hand that arouses my-- curiosity- - angst-- whatever. In order to prevent blood clots from forming in my legs and coming up to knock me off, I am faced with a blood thinner. It is not the first time. A few years ago I was told to take Coumadin (sp?) for awhile. For the uninitiated, Coumadin is also called Warfarin and is what the rat killing pellets you placed in the garage are laced with. (I think it is also related to Curare which is the poison tratdionally associated with the blowguns of South American aborigines).

I didn't get asked to take Coumadin this time. Instead I was told to (and I am strictly obeying!) inject some stuff into the fat around my middle. The stuff is called LOVENOX. Doesn't that sound romantic? I wonder where my ox is? Am I really supposed to love one? "Some day my ox will come" sound like a familiar song lyric. I am sure that the stuff works because I bleed a lot if I cut myself shaving. My disenchantment began when the pharmacist revealed that if I didn't have insurance, my three week supply would cost over six hundred dollars. Ouch. (One of the other blessings of being over seventy is that even with insurance that pays all but twenty five bucks on name brand drugs and all but ten bucks on generic ones my regular monthly CO-PAYMENT exceeds a hundred bucks.)

The thing that brought me to the computer was the foolishness of reading the label on Lovenox.
It is derived from "porcine intestinal mucosa". That is the fancy way of saying I am injecting the digestive fluids of pigs into my abdomen. You would think that the honest name for this stuff would be Loveapig, or Loveaporker (I don't think Love a swine would cut it, although some of my former students have used the terminolgy to describe intimate relations with their partners.) Oh well, one - two - three POKE. I am now Lovenoxed (or lovea pigged or - - whatever. ). It is weird to think of how many pork chops one could buy for the price of some pig's intestinal mucosa.