Bitter Little Pills

I just got another prescription filled today, for Cabergoline which is the tiny bitter little pill that I take to shrink the benign tumour on my pituitary gland.  I swallow half a pill twice a week.  It is bitter and I swallow it quickly.  There are possible side effects but so far nothing seems very different.  I get the pills at the Canadian Cancer Society where the medication is one hundred percent subsidized, otherwise I would be shoving out sixty-five bucks every month for this opportunity of staying alive a little bit longer.  I did have to yell and scream a bit about this while in the hospital when on the day of my release the good doctors and pharmacist gave me the heads up about my long term therapy and treatment.  I did not take this news lying down but made it abundantly clear that even if not taking the bitter little pills would kill me there is no way I could afford to pay for them so I'd might as well take my chances and put my life in God's hands.  I was reassured that they would do their utmost to ensure that I would not have to pay one single nickel for the pills.

My other medication is a thyroid supplement called Synthroid.  I take three little pills a day.  They taste sweet though I still swallow them with water or orange juice.  I need this medication because apparently the tumor on my pituitary has paralyzed my thyroid and gone a bit crazy flooding my system with prolactin which is the hormone that women secrete in order to lactate.  I was asked while in hospital six times by as many doctors if I have ever lactated.  My stock answer: No, I have never been in the "family way".

Not that this is important, but I am a man by the way, but still there is something about this prolactin business that doesn't really surprise me.  I am asexual, androgynous and, as I have recently figured out, agender.  Maybe I'm suppose to secrete prolactin and they simply have mistaken my biological sex with my gender, or should I say, my lack of gender.

Knowing that I will be on medications for a long time, likely for whatever remains of what I hope to be a long and healthy and productive life, I have to learn to adapt, to make time to visit places that dispense the medications.  A nuisance perhaps but I think still a most rational concession to this fact of mortality.