WHATEVER WORKS

WHATEVER WORKS
T. Wieland Allen


Every time I think about reaching for a medicine to take, grabbing a bottle, and it turns out to be the wrong med, I remember an experience I had when I was a teenager.

A friend had come to my house after school for a visit. She had huge fever blisters on her top lip. Since my sister Joy regularly had fever blisters, she had a bottle in the bathroom medicine cabinet of wonderful fever blister medicine prescribed by a doctor.

My friend asked if we had anything she could put on her fever blisters because they were getting bigger and were feverish. I told her to go to our medicine cabinet where there was a green bottle that was a prescription for fever blisters and she could use that. She did.

Two days later she asked me what the medicine was because it healed her fever blisters almost immediately, much faster than the prescription that she had at home.

I told her I didn't know the name of it but I would look on the bottle. She told me that she had left the bottle on the back of the toilet at our house.

When I went home from school that day I remembered her request for the name of the medicine, so I went in the bathroom and, sure enough, a green medicine bottle was on the back of the toilet.

I looked on the bottle for the name of the wonderful medicine that did such remarkable healing of my friend's fever blisters, much faster than it had done for my own sister. I noticed as I looked for the name of the medicine that the instructions on the bottle said, "Apply to hemorrhoids twice a day."

I told my friend I couldn't find the bottle. As a shy teenager I was too embarrassed to tell her the truth.

But, hey, whatever works.