Ever heard of a medication called ‘Lipitor?’ It’s apparently a cholesterol reducing drug that’ll clean out your pipes better than a Roto-Rooter. Side effects, though, are enough to put off the most arterially-challenged person on the planet. The wonderful benefits of the drug may be overshadowed by: muscle problems, liver ailments, tenderness, weakness, fever, flu-like symptoms, abdominal pain, fatigue, yellowing skin or eyes, dark urine, pale stools… Yippee! I’ll take a couple of gross. Seriously, though, would any right-minded person risk taking this stuff? Personally a couple of shots of 151 proof rum have always worked for me. Side effects – your jokes get a bit more raunchy.
Charlie was out sailing with some novices the other day. They were on an offshore passage, making course form Tortola to St Martin. The weather started out fine with light winds but as the evening turned into night the winds increased and the seas picked up. By midnight crew-member Joe was feeling sick. In the dark cabin he rummaged through his baggage to find a Scopolamine patch and stuck it on. Ten minutes later he up-chucked the contents of his stomach, “There goes my Lipitor,” he mumbled.
“What’s that?” asked Charlie. Joe explained and later, when Charlie found out the possible, gruesome side-effects of the wonder drug, he wasn’t surprised.
In the morning Joe was bemoaning the Scopolamine patch he’d used when someone noticed he’d actually put it on upside down. This led to some early morning hilarity rare on a boat pounding to windward in 6-foot seas.
“Hey what a great cure for diarrhea,” said someone. “Just stick a patch on your bum.”
“Better not put it on upside down.”
“Yeah, and verbal diarrhea like you have, stick a patch on your tongue.”
Ron, the third crew, was almost seventy years old. Apparently he had an enlarged prostate and was in and out of the head all night long, “I’m going to try a patch on my pecker,” he said. A couple of days later he was sure it was working.
And that just goes to show you that psychology may be the best cure in your first aid kit.
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