I went to the doctor last month, and he told me about a new medication that helps people like me who occasionally have red, rashy skin on their faces. Sorry if this is too much information, but I promise you that the worst is over.
The new medication is actually an old medication, but with a new application. It’s a version of an acne treatment, but at a very low dose. In other words, it’s already been through the battery of trials and investigations medications must overcome before you can put them in your mouth (or wherever). In this case, the prescribed dose is so much lower that you would think getting it would be easy.
You would be incorrect. To get the pharmacist to hand over the pills, I had to go to a website, answer a bunch of personal questions, certify that I understood the risks involved with this medicine, receive a special ID code to present to the pharmacist, and sign another affidavit about the possible side effects. Only then did I get the small-dose prescription of a medicine that’s already widely available, which my doctor told me might make my skin a little less red.
All of the questions on the website and every side-effect warning were centered on my uterus, and what might happen to it and to the child I might carry. There is a small chance, less than 1%, according to the warnings, that I could have trouble carrying a child to term thanks to the possible effect the medication has in higher doses on my uterus and the female reproductive system. The pharmaceutical company wanted me to know — and wanted to know that I know — that as a result of taking this medication, I may have trouble with my childbearing apparatus, especially my uterus.
Perhaps you’ve detected the problem here. I don’t have a uterus. And I don’t plan on getting one anytime soon. And even if I did have a uterus, at my age, it would pretty much be a vestigial kind of thing, sort of like when you visit an ancient ruined city and the guide points out where the marketplace was.
“Imagine this place when it was intact,” the guide says, “teeming with life and activity. Now, of course, it’s nothing but rocks and weeds.”
But I really wanted to try this new medication — excuse me: this old medication with a new application at a much lower dose — so I dutifully filled out the questionnaire and certified that I knew I was putting my uterus at risk. I got the code and went to CVS to pick up the pills.
“Sorry,” the pharmacist said. “You need to do it all over again. Apparently, you waited too long between your doctor’s prescription and going to the website, so you need to go again and get a fresh code.”
“Because of my uterus?” I asked.
“Yes,” the pharmacist said. “There are apparently possible side effects that may make it difficult to conceive or carry a fetus to term.”
“I already have a lot of trouble with those things,” I said. “Would you like to guess why?”
We stared at each other for a while until I finally gave up.
“Let me ask you something,” I said to my doctor when I called him to complain about the process. “If you had prescribed me something really juicy, like an opioid or something, would I have to go to a website to get a special code?”
“Probably not,” he said.
“And this is because it’s just a general rule now in the medical arena that literally anyone can have a uterus, even an adult male in his late 50s?” I asked.
“Correct,” he said.
I told him that, on balance, I’d rather stick with the slightly red skin problem than go through the whole process again.
“And also,” I added, “the redness in my face has really diminished since I went through menopause.”
He didn’t even laugh.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
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