notageek

I just wasted about an hour of my life trawling around the Internets, trying to figure out what the canonical method of applying eye makeup is for Asian women so that I can modify it for my half-breed face.

What I found: there is a crease or fold or something which some Asians have and some don’t, it’s very important to apply makeup the proper way according to whether one has the crease or fold or whatever or not, and nobody seems able to define this crease/fold characteristic clearly. Canonical Asian beauty is based on having or not having this crease/fold, although only about half of all Asians do (or don’t; I can’t tell), and the other half wishes to be like the first half.

Seriously, I give up. I’m going to start going to lab tarted up like Brian Molko.

I was at the counter, counting out a month’s worth of thyroid replacement at arm’s length and with my face scrunched up.

“What the hell?” inquired my preceptor. “Never mind. I love the theatrics.”

I was holding my breath, so I didn’t answer anyway.

Tariq, the cashier who’s training to be a technician, came back from break and cracked up. “What, does it smell gross?”

“OH GAWD. It’s dessicated pork thyroid, and it’s horrible. Wanna smell?” I’d finished counting, and helpfully held out the stock bottle.

“No-no, that’s ok,” he said, waving it off and stepping back.

And that’s when I realised I’d shoved what’s probably one of the most haraam medications in the pharmacy under the nose of my young and very solemnly Muslim co-worker.

Doh.

The Angry Pharmacist, like me, hates a great many things about retail pharmacy, and we recount a lot of the same stories.

TAP has a lot more stories than I do, but mine are better spelled. I’m sure my patients care a lot about how eloquently I make fun of them on the Internet.

Do you have any idea how many fan videos have been cobbled together from low-res Buffy/Spike scenes, set to bad late 90s music and chucked onto Youtube?

There’s, uh, a lot. Not that I would know, or anything.

I exist at a familial intersection of left/right politics; my dad and a couple of his sisters are firmly entrenched on the left edge of the muddled middle. The rest of his siblings have been reborn I don’t know how many times into their respective denominations, and while they’re tolerant of the multi-ethnic pansexual vegetarians among us, it’s tolerance in the classical sense; they put up with our BS, while hoping we’ll eventually be multi-ethnic chaste Christian vegetarian homemakers.

I bring this up because I’m cool with it. There’s no alternatives to the situation, so I had to come to terms with it. Also, my dad fled to the West Coast in part because he couldn’t stand living in the thick of it, so I’ve never had to. If I do enough reading and concentrate, I think I can get an idea of the worldview my conservative relatives live by.

Which is why I am just so baffled when people brush off the HPV vaccine on religious grounds, but since there is no way HPV-vax opponents are going to find me credible, I will instead detail why despite planning on being married to my partner as long as we’re both still alive, I got the first injection of the Gardasil series last week.

Because I can’t get it later.
This is relevant largely because of the next point, but Gardasil is currently indicated only for women age 9-26, and I am squeaking right in under the upper bound there. While clinicians prescribe drugs off-label all the time, the indication greatly influences insurance coverage and, when supplies are short, who gets the jab. When walking on eggshells, as in shortly after approval, companies are also likely to push adherence to the indication as a way to minimise adverse events.

Because it strikes me as stupid to plan for only the best-case scenario.
The reason I have a savings account, that I’m going through school, that I purchase insurance policies, and that I go to my yearly physicals is the same reason I’m getting the vaccine. However much I hope and work for a certain pattern of events, nothing guarantees what will come to pass. The emotional fallout from any one of those events would be more than enough without a health complication on top of it.

Assuming we stay married as long as we both live, given current life expectancies and that my spouse is both male and older than me, the odds are rather in favour of me being a widow at some point. I’d rather not gamble on Merck having successfully petitioned the FDA to expand the age indication by then. (Aside: why is it only indicated for this age group? Because that’s who they did the studies in.)

Because I’ve supported my very good friend through the surgical aftermath of an abnormal pap smear.
And it fucking sucks. She had a prescription for 60 Percocet and 3 weeks worth of prescription-strength ibuprofen–that’s how much the doc expected it to hurt. I happily took a jab in the arm pudge to reduce my chances of having to go through both the physical pain and the horrible unknowing of waiting for the pathology report.

As I see it, I’m protecting all of us: me, him, my cervical competency and ability to carry a pregnancy. Should you decide to get it, though, be aware: it stings like a motherfucker.