Part 3: Doing the Medicine Dance
I’ve lost track of the pleasant exchanges I’ve had recently with total strangers, all of us on Medicine Road wishing we were any place but here. Misery may love company, but empathy is one of the best human qualities. We all seem to show much more compassion and concern for each other standing in line at Walgreens or CVS than what’s so unfortunately common today in modern traffic. Nobody cuts the drug line or exchanges one-finger salutes. Instead, we smile and nod knowingly at each other and frequently discuss everything from the Spurs to Texas weather just to pass the time that so very often crawls by interminably when dealing with the consequences of illness.
A sign six feet or so from the counter directs our group to stand behind it. I’m told it’s to allow privacy for medicinal conversations, but the distance does little to impair hearing; I can almost always pick up word by word exchanges between staff and customers, and even many feet further away where a pharmacist now informs some agitated person over the phone she can’t fill a prescription because it’s held up for “prior authorization.” Continue reading “Living at Wallgreens”