Meow.

I was on for twelve hours on Tuesday. I usually don’t have breaks even on twelve hour shifts, but there are quieter times of the day when I can rest my mind a little by doing menial stuff like Webster packing or signing nursing home scripts.

This Tuesday, however, demanded that I run around like a crazy person for the entire day. Refilling my thermos or going to the bathroom were luxuries. By about 6:00 pm I was mentally and physically drained.

And then the middle-aged son of Mr G, one of our regular elderly customers, comes in. He has a prescription for his father from the hospital, the doctors of which love saving paper by squeezing up to 15 items onto a single script.

Mr G Junior requests that I print instructions on the labels for each of his father’s medications, which we normally do anyway. However, Mr G’s prescription includes a weaning course of prednisone, and the doctor had written the directions in milligrams like this: days 1-2, 12.5 mg; days 3-4, 7 mg; days 5-6, 5 mg. I dispense the three strengths of prednisone, but thought that the instructions would look a bit confusing on labels, so I decide to make this table to make things easier:

I don’t have a lot of time to spare, so I make the unwise assumption that all people above school age are familiar with decimals.

When I show Mr G Junior the table, he looks really confused. I explain it to him twice, and with furrowed brows he asks me “what’s 0.5?” I tell him it means half, in this case half of the 25 mg tablet.

Mr G Junior leaves. Not long after, his father rings the pharmacy in a state of confusion. He has a heavy accent that I have trouble understanding under normal circumstances, and now I have no idea what he’s saying. Eventually I realise he is unable to interpret my table so I tell him to ask his son.

However, when Mr G puts his son on the phone, his son asks “what exactly is 0.5? Is that five tablets?”

I explain 0.5 to him again, and when he hangs up I look around for an instrument with which to stab myself in the face.

So when I answer the phone ten minutes later and hear Mr G’s voice I cut him off and say “please just tell your son to bring everything back to the pharmacy”. Mr G tells me to wait because his son wants to speak with me, then hangs up on me.

Nevertheless, Mr G Junior comes in just as I am getting the Webster packing equipment ready to put him out of the misery of having to think. I take the tablets off him and pack his father’s Webster pack, labelling every blister with a handwritten sticker indicating on which day it should be taken. It was the most fool-proof thing to ever walk out of the pharmacy. Honestly.

Mr G Junior is thankful for the Webster pack, but pulls out the table again. I tell him he won’t be needing it anymore, but as I look down I see that he’s filled in some of the boxes where I had originally put a dash with “1/2”. So I picked the wrong mathematical expression. Fractions he did understand.

I ask him why he had written “1/2” in those boxes. He said “I don’t know. I don’t get what those little lines mean. Are they half too?”

With the belief that beautiful hands and increased productivity will make me a better person, I have two half-yearly resolutions.

The first is that I will stop picking at my cuticles. I have bought these awesome but expensive cuticle clippers to supplement my resolution.

The second is that I will stop sleeping in until 11 am. I’ll probably make occasional exceptions, but no more frequently than say, once a week. Napping is still permitted.

Should I show signs of regression let my voice turn into that of whoever is doing this train’s announcements. Believe me it’s really that bad.