I don't know how people get addicted to some medicines when I can't even get the top off the bottle.
I try - oh, how I try - but on more than one occasion, I decide I'll give up and live or die without the aid of modern medicine. Other times, when I'm less resigned to my fate, I examine the bottle closely and discover I must deal with cellophane that almost invisibly covers the top and neck of the bottle before I can figure out how the bottle cap works.
I approach the cellophane with several tools, scissors, embroidery scissors, nail scissors, nail file, paring knife - until, finally, the cellophane gives way. It is then that I find the semi-perforated line running down the side of the bottle to ease the removal of the cellophane, should I be so lucky or my eyesight so good as to spot the perforation.
Now, I assume, I can remove the lid. Oh, would that it were true. To do that, I must read directions pressed into the lid. Do not try this unless you have 20-20 vision and a 200-watt bulb within 3 feet of the bottle.
I'll tell you what it says for future reference. It says: 1) Press down and turn, 2) press sides and turn or 3) match arrows on top and bottle and turn. These are just the feats you perform so well when your arthritis is crying for sympathy.
I grit my teeth and after about three tries I succeed. The cap separates from the bottle and the pills are at my fingertips. No, no. An aluminum cover is fitted tightly over the opening. I try to peel it off and try again and finally grab a scissors, stab a hole right in the center of the foil and rip it open.
From there on, it's easy: Just coax several feet of cotton out of the bottle and find the pills that occupy about one-eighth of the bottle.
This is how the process operates in bright daylight. I leave to your imagination what happens in the dead of night, when I wake up with a piercing headache and stumble into the bathroom to get the pill that will relieve the blinding pain, only to discover I must do battle with an unopened bottle.
Of course, I always ask for tops that are not childproof, since there are no children around to protect. Considering the frustration that non-safe caps induce, I shudder to think what a childproof top entails.
Childproof tops were one of the advances I welcomed, as did all the mothers I knew. I had lived in fear of having a child overdosing on baby aspirin or cough medicine, even though we had all medicines well out of reach in our bathroom.
Now I would be spared that anxiety. I was so naïve....
The other evening I was reminded of my enthusiastic endorsement of childproof bottles when I was caring for my dear ones while their parents were elsewhere.
After dinner, John brought me a bottle of children's vitamins and said he wanted one. I knew nothing about the vitamin regimen of the family so told him I'd have to wait to ask his mother before I could give him one.
Persistent fellow that he is, he assured me they let him have them all the time, and Julia chimed in to assure me that they could have the vitamins whenever they wanted to.
Still, I held out for word from the higher authority. Besides, I told them, there was a special top on the bottle, and I didn't know how it worked. Best we wait.
In one voice, they said, "Oh, Grammy, we'll show you how," and turn, twist, turn, the childproof top was off and the bottle was open. I should know by now that child-proof is an oxymoron.
Roberta Cole's column What's on the Age-Enda appears the last week of each month. Send e-mail to her at robertascole@hotmail.com.
[[In-content Ad]]
