I don’t want to mislead you with that title. This post is not about autism. The Buffoon-in-Chief, flanked by his Secretary of Health and Human Services (Bobby Brain Worm) and the head of Medicare/Medicaid (TV’s Doctor Oz), declared that taking Tylenol during pregnancy causes autism. It does not. I am not a doctor or a researcher, but I can make that statement definitively and categorically refuting the President’s claim because of the philosophical principle developed by the late Christopher Hitchens known as Hitchens’ Razor, which holds that “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence,” meaning the burden of proof for a claim lies with the person who makes it – if no evidence is offered, no evidence is required to reject it. So I say again, Tylenol does not cause autism.
No, this post is about Calista of happy memory. Had you asked me when she was alive, I’d have told you she was a PITA. But death has a way of rehabilitating people’s reputations, so there you have it. Calista was my next-door neighbor here at Stonewall Gardens. At night, as I have already established, I am up at odd hours; I would often hear her having conversations, some of them quite animated.
So one day, curiosity got the better of me and I asked her, “who are you talking to?” Her answer may lead you to believe she was a complete looney, but I think it demonstrates healthy introspection and self-examination. We have lovely exposed-beam ceilings in our apartments here, and she told me each beam in hers represented a person she was in conflict with; at night, she would converse with the beams in her ceiling to better understand those she disagreed with. While I have not adopted the practice as she pursued it, I think it is brilliant – what a better world this would be if we all tried to understand where those we’re arguing with are coming from!
One of the services offered by assisted living facilities is called “Medication Management.” For someone like me, it is invaluable. Not only does staff give me all my medications at their prescribed times (no small feat, as I take 20 different medications daily!), but they refill them with the pharmacy, communicate with multiple doctors’ offices, and deal with storing all the bottles and packages in their centralized, computerized “med room.” I rely on it and consider it the most important thing they do here, next to feeding me three times a day.
But it is not without its drawbacks. According to state regulations, the staff here must follow written doctors’ orders in dispensing medications, meaning they even need a written order for over-the-counter (OTC) remedies/medications as well as prescriptions. This means for things you can buy in a supermarket, like Nyquil, or Alka-Seltzer Plus® Maximum Strength PowerMax® Gels. Or Tylenol. Some doctors balk at this requirement, but most (of mine, anyway) understand it is the nature of the assisted living beast. Being “on Med Management” also means that any remedies/medications you might be in possession of without doctors’ orders on file are considered “contraband” and are subject to confiscation.
Calista had a headache. So she went out and bought some Tylenol, and took it. A Med Tech (what we call the people in charge of medications) got wind of this and took her Tylenol away. She was furious. She and her daughter came to see me in my then-role as President of the Resident Council, in which I acted as a liaison between management and residents. I heard their side of the story. The Med Tech’s behavior in carrying out the facility’s policy did seem rather capricious.
Then I went to the Executive Director to get her side on behalf of the facility. The reasoning made sense to me. If a resident is “self-medicating” while under the care of the facility’s Med Management program, and suffers an adverse effect, there are liability issues for the facility; but if there is an adverse effect which results from following a doctor’s orders which the facility is implementing, the liability rests with the doctor. This might include harmful drug interactions or an allergy to an ingredient, things a doctor in his or her professional capacity (training, compensation, experience) can be expected to know, which a Med Tech who has completed some relevant online training and is not compensated at the same level cannot.
Moreover, in an emergency, responding paramedics and/or an ER physician are going to want to know “did the patient take anything?” In the case of an assisted living resident under a Med Management program, facility staff cannot answer that question with certainty unless they are the sole source of that person’s medications.
I met with Calista and her daughter to explain Stonewall’s side of things. Her daughter nodded in assent; like me, she saw the wisdom in the facility’s position and policy. But Calista was having none of it. She was an imposing figure, well over six feet tall. She unleashed a torrent of very unpleasant language. Even though it was the policy of Stonewall Gardens following state regulations and not mine personally, I was terrified.
That night, through the walls I heard Calista talking to her ceiling. She was saying:
“But Matt, it’s only Tylenol!”