Good Medicine

By Charissa Kolar

I have heard it said that women have a higher tolerance for pain than men do. Maybe that was started by someone with first-hand knowledge of childbirth? I don’t really know if that is true or not, but it does seem like my husband is very intolerant of being sick. He is not sick very often so when it does happen it always seems to catch him by surprise and bring out his impatient side. In a general sense he is your classic “type A” individual—a driven, organized, in-charge busy professional.

I will never forget the time he came home from work complaining about a sore throat. He said he felt like he was getting sick. I didn’t pay that much attention to it because he really doesn’t get sick very often, and I figured he would probably feel fine after a good night’s sleep. In the morning he felt worse and actually went to the doctor. (He goes to the doctor so infrequently I half wondered if our medical insurance company would call and report fraudulent activity on our health care card.) Anyway, he was sure he had strep throat or something worse. The doctor confirmed he did not have strep throat and thus there were no antibiotics he could prescribe. They assured him he just had a virus, and that he should take ibuprofen for the pain till it runs it’s course.

Later at home, he relayed the information to me from the doctor, rummaged through the medicine cabinet and headed off to bed. This really was an annoying case of a sore throat for us both because he continued to complain about it day and night for 2 days. While I could have been more empathetic, I started to get annoyed with his frustrated lamenting. Finally on the third day, at 2 a.m. he turned on the light and sat up in bed. “I can’t take it anymore!” he announced. “Why am I not feeling any better?” I thought to myself, “Really? You are waking me up to tell me this in the middle of the night? Aren’t we getting a little dramatic here?”

Determined to get to some answers, he jumped out of bed and ran to the ibuprofen bottle. He held it up and examined it closely. Then he dumped the last few pills in his hand and put them under the light. “What are these pills?” he said to me. “They look sort of pink.” I looked at the pills from across the room and recognized them instantly. Then I noticed he didn’t have our actual giant sized Ibuprofen bottle in hand. That easy-to-find large container that we buy from Costco with a neon orange label. Somehow he found a small sample size bottle that I had kept at the bottom of the medicine cabinet. “Do you know what these are?” he asked again. “I don’t think these are Ibuprofen.”

I had to confess. “Oh honey, I use that little bottle to take pills with us on vacation. Those are my pre-natal vitamins.” He looked at me with grave fear on his face. Then in his most serious tone of voice he asked, “Am I going to become emotional?” Before answering I couldn’t help but think to myself, “well, that would be nice…”

But I quickly put his fears to rest. “No, no. There is no hormone in the vitamins, just extra Folic acid.” He was reeling trying to take it all in, and I could tell he was still wondering if there might be any short-term effects for having made this mistake. I went and retrieved the actual Ibuprofen bottle for him, and we went back to sleep. He weathered the rest of his throat virus pain-free and all the complaining ceased.

A few weeks later, I was scheduled to speak at the mom’s group meeting at our church. I asked my husband if I could share this story at the beginning of my talk as a sort of an opener. He agreed but cautioned me, “No one will find that story funny.”

Fortunately for me and my talk, he was wrong.

In fact, even he finds it a little funny now. Five years have passed since the medicine mix-up incident and just the other day he was searching through the cabinet for a multi-vitamin and he came across my latest batch of pre-natal vitamins (second child). He looked at it and said to me “this is one of yours, huh?” I replied, “Yep.” To my surprise, he matter of factly tossed it down his throat and said on his way out, “I am used to these now.”

Charissa Kolar is co-author of Your Newborn Promise Project: A Pre-Parenting Primer for Husband and Wife, co-producer the Newborn Promise Podcast, and a Graham Blanchard Inc. project director.