This is sort of coming out of nowhere. Probably all the articles on physician assisted suicide and withholding treatment resurrected by the Schiavo autopsy and partly a friend's entry on fluoride.
(Hmmm. Ever notice that "nowhere", "no where", is also "now here"?)
When Jay was getting super-duper pain killers, we used them only when necessary. So sometimes when the hospital nurses handed me a prescription for more, I'd say no, we still had a lot left and didn't need more just yet. On more than one occasion, the nurses took my hand, looked deep into my eyes, and whispered, "Take them. Save them. There may come a time when you'll need a supply on hand." The "there may come a time" said a lot.
I knew what they were getting at. I did finally accept the extra prescriptions, but only for "just in case". Like if we got snowed in or something. What the nurses implied was unthinkable. Not for moral reasons - I wouldn't mind it for myself if it came to that - but because Jay intended to fight to the end, and I knew and respected that.
When Jay died, I donated all the nonprescription supplies and the CPAP machine to Hospice. I was left with many bottles of government-regulated super-strong narcotics, of several types.
I asked the visiting nurse what I should do with them. Even though they were horrendously expensive, they couldn't be donated. It would be a felony to give them to anyone else, even if that person had a valid prescription they couldn't afford to fill. She said the usual thing is to flush them down the toilet.
I sorta freaked!
We all have backyard septic systems and wells around here. Some of these chemicals persist in the groundwater. Septic tanks and ground percolation kill or remove most bad biological things, but next to nothing affects most drugs. They go through the cycle intact. (Water processing plants can't always remove some of them, either. And they don't test for them.) So if I dumped a load of Oxy-IR (souped-up Oxycontin) into my septic tank, there's a fair chance my neighbors' kids will end up drinking it! THAT should be the felony!
She looked very worried when I said that, but she had no answer.
I wonder what hospitals do with old drugs? I don't know what gets into the air if you try to burn it. I wonder what my neighbors are flushing?
So, I got a plastic container, and put all the pills and capsules into it, and added water, and waited until everything had mostly dissolved. I sealed the container, taped around the seal, then wrapped it in several layers of plastic, wrapped solidly with duct tape. Then I put that package into a metal Christmas candy container, and wrapped that the same way. It should be airtight and watertight. I set it aside for a few days, and when it didn't explode, I buried it as deep as I could near the edge of the woods.
My own little nuclear waste dump.
~~Silk
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