The Ole' Apothecary

At the end of his major league baseball career, New York Yankee ironman Lou Gehrig said that he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I beg to differ with Mr. 2160-consecutive-games. I am.

In 1952, I was born to a man and a woman who were, publicly, a salesman and a hairdresser respectively. The salesman was an Army veteran of the Pacific World War II. The hairdresser was the daughter of a haberdasher, and her booming singing voice entertained the troops when she was a USO volunteer. They dated for four months, then married. His father-in-law thought he was a "fly-by-night." (Well, he flew to New York once, I think. )The salesman and the singer will be married 60 years in February. They have always been together. They've lived in the same house for 43 years. If they sound devoted to their family, they are. The watchful care of a father and a mother is something that is rapidly perishing from the earth, and I believe that I was born in the nick of time to savor the best of it. Without it, I believe I would be lost, or, at least, spiritually crippled. I would have sickened and died in a maelstrom of influences, few of which would have been edifying. I write these words today knowing that I am a recipient of so many gifts from them, gifts not made with hands, that I didn't deserve. I hope I will live, and die, worthy of their legacy to me.

If they were of a mind to write a book about how to have a family, and the people of the United States put their words into practice, our country would be invincible. We would have a citizenry of high moral character, a strong work ethic, and built upon a framework of love. No, they are not perfect, but if they were not my parents, I would, once knowing them, have pleaded with them to take the job.

Ole' Apothecary? Well, I'm 55 years old. Now, I type the words that begin my eternal digital imprint.

I have been practicing pharmacy since 1976, and my experience spans both community (retail) and hospital practice: I've got equal numbers of years of experience at each venue. Other blogs I have read seem to center on venting about what is wrong with pharmacy now, but I seek that mine will center on the future of pharmacy. Where the heck are we going? How can we solve our profession's problems? How can we stand tall?

In 31 years, I have seen drug therapy take quantum leaps forward, and pharmacy's supportive technology followed. I began with an old manual typewriter at my fingertips, and now it has been replaced by the world at my fingertips.

To begin, how far have we come since Shakespeare wrote the following in Romeo and Juliet?

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Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.
Let's see for means: O mischief, thou art swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
I do remember an apothecary,--
And hereabouts he dwells,--which late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones:
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff'd, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show.
Noting this penury, to myself I said
'An if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.'
O, this same thought did but forerun my need;
And this same needy man must sell it me.
As I remember, this should be the house.
Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.
What, ho! apothecary!

Enter Apothecary

Apothecary

Who calls so loud?

ROMEO

Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor:
Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have
A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear
As will disperse itself through all the veins
That the life-weary taker may fall dead
And that the trunk may be discharged of breath
As violently as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

Apothecary

Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law
Is death to any he that utters them.

ROMEO

Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back;
The world is not thy friend nor the world's law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

Apothecary

My poverty, but not my will, consents.

ROMEO

I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.

Apothecary

Put this in any liquid thing you will,
And drink it off; and, if you had the strength
Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.

ROMEO

There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.
Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh.
Come, cordial and not poison, go with me
To Juliet's grave; for there must I use thee.

Exeunt