I am stricken with migraines.  They don’t come from just one source.  I have hormonal migraines (not often now), stress migraines, and migraines that are resultant from to much blood flow to the brain.  For the last of these I use a vasoconstrictor medication called Maxalt.  It doesn’t work on the worst of the headaches.  For those I have to use Imitrex, but for the headaches I have almost daily the Maxalt works just fine.  The problem with both of these medications is they are very powerful.  Someone described them once by saying only take them when you are afraid you will die if you do not take them, because you might if you do.  Well, if you have ever had a migraine you know that there is a pain level that you reach that will cause you to take anything to make the pain go away.  This pain is a blinding, sickening, screaming pain that worsens with light, sound,  or movement.  Now imagine having a headaches like that and getting your medication out and finding these instructions…”carefully fold in half along the dotted line…tear in half at center mark.”  Now you are in extreme pain and nearly blind, sick at your stomach and trying to fold a square of paper approximately 1 inch by 1 inch in half so that you can then tear it in half again in the other direction.  It’s asinine.  The Imitrex is not much better.  My delivery system of choice (it comes in nasal spray..ugh! Melt under the tongue..ugh! and a pill) was the injection.  I didn’t have to think I just had to point and shoot.  Then someone decided to save money and make the patient load the syringe rather than have filled syringes ready.  If you have a serious migraine, truly the only thing you want to load is a gun.

At first I thought it was just me.  Then in one blinding fit of pain I cried “Uncle” and asked my husband to open the packaging for me.  After about 15 minutes, he got the scissors out and cut the thing open.  Recently my daughter had a migraine and she asked if I had something for it.  She wrestled with the Maxalt for about 5 minutes and then brought it in to me and said that the package was making her headache worse.  I (not having a migraine) opened the package quickly and handed it back to her.  The disgust was evident on her face.  All of this got me thinking about the days when pills came in bottles that just opened.  Does anyone remember?  It was before the Tylenol scare that caused everyone to be so afraid of OTC medications.  Then someone came up with the brilliant idea of childproof caps.  In addition to the “press both sides in simultaneously while turning” or “press down and turn” they added a cellophane shrink wrap around the neck of the bottle and used some type of glue that was formulated at NASA.  And (here’s the beauty of it all) only children can get into them.  You can give The Precious a closed bottle of children’s Tylenol tablets and he will have those “nummies” opened before you can say…well you know. 

So while I’m ranting there is also this…I receive three different medications for my arthritis and fibromyalgia pain.  When I go to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions they are  in childproof bottles.  Okay, for the most part except that my pharmacist and his associates know me, and have for awhile.  I am the one making the mortgage payment on his house.  He told me the other day that his oldest was going to college in the fall.  I asked him if he thought I was going to pay for it.  They ‘effing love me!  They know that I don’t have any children at home.  All of my kids are…well adults.  They can’t open the stupid bottles for me either (and most of them have college degrees!).  I asked the pharmacy to please put the lids on my bottles with the “not childproof” caps on.  You would think this was rocket science.  Maybe half a dozen times I have gotten the bottles and not had to switch the lids over.  I know it may seem like a simple thing, but when you have arthritis in your hands, wrists, and elbows little things can become complex.  I once did without my medication until my husband came home from a trip because I could not open the damn bottle.  He thought I was really glad to see him when he came home, but about 50% of my excitement was due to the fact that I could take my pain meds!

It’s really sad that the few have made it hard for the many.  I really can’t imagine, seeing all the gnarled joints in my rheumatologist’s office, that I am the only person plagued by this.  You know, it is a lot easier to get in to other things that are equally dangerous.  For instance, the dishwasher detergent doesn’t have a childproof cap.  The Clorox Clean-up is just a spray.  There are a gazillion products that contain bleach, lead,  acid, and other poisons that anyone can get to at a moment’s notice.  Even mouse poison has arsenic in it, and what do you have to do to open it?  Open it!   So I guess the question comes down to, what are we really being protected from?  I think the answer is we aren’t being protected at all.  The manufacturer’s are just protecting their own asses and making a lot of us paranoid in the process. 

So…other than the products that can’t be switched to non-child resistant lids, I have done what I think is the proper thing to do.   I have flipped the lids over, I have moved the poisonous chemicals (both those with and without tamper proof caps) high where The Precious can’t reach them and placed a lock on the cabinet under that sink where the dish liquid and other cleaners are kept.  Of course the cabinet lock is childproof so I am just hoping that he doesn’t figure that out until he is old enough to understand what danger is.  I am also hoping that someday he will understand what danger is!