Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving each year makes me even more nostalgic for family memories and tradition than usual. I almost always start my reminiscing with memories of the whole family together at Nanny and Granddaddy's old farmhouse out in the country. It is cold weather in my memory although living in the South it is very possible that it could have been upwards of 75 degrees on Thanksgiving Day (like it is this year!). Anyway, back to the farmhouse... I remember going there every year with my parents and sister and seeing all my mom's side of the family there. Unfortunately, my Dad's parents passed away the summer I was eight years old so most of my holidays were spent with my Mom's family from then on. My aunts and uncle would always love to see us as my sister and I were the only children for a long time. My mom's siblings didn't get married and have children until much later and it was great fun getting all the attention! We would have a huge meal that Nanny cooked all by herself to include at least a 20 pound turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, rice and giblet gravy, biscuits, all sorts of relishes and pickles, pickled peaches (story on that in a bit), celery sticks (to dip into individual crystal salt cellars at each place setting), two kinds of cranberry sauce (with and without berries since Grandaddy liked the one with berries) and so much more I can't remember right now. It was a huge feast and no one left the table unsatisfied. The pickled peaches were a mystery to me. They came in a jar but were always served by my grandmother in a beautiful round crystal pedestal dish with a wide gold band around the rim. I never once tried a pickled peach as a child. It became a joke to see if I would eat one each year but I  held my ground. I guess since it wasn't a staple nutritional food, my mother never invoked the "one bite rule". Thank goodness!

Nanny would always have several choices of cakes, pies and cookies for dessert. The routine would go like this: Nanny would name off everything she had for dessert choices and Grandaddy would say "I'll take some!" Even though he did the same thing every year, we always laughed.

Before dinner, my sister and I would run around the farm playing hide and seek and other games. We loved crawling around underneath the giant magnolia tree in the front yard, wandering under the grapevines and digging in the sand driveway for "doodlebugs". We would find the small circular holes and take a small stick to swirl around in the doodlebug holes (seen below) and call out to the doodlebug to come out. "Doodlebug, doodlebug...come get bread and butter..." My mom and aunts taught us that chant. As you can see by the scale using the pen, the holes were small and on the farm, there were hundreds of them. I don't know what we actually did with the bugs once they crawled out of the holes but we surely had fun aggravating them to come out! Silly, but a vivid memory.

After dinner, the adults would all go out to the front porch where it was cool as night fell. As a child, that was the last place my sister and I wanted to be so we would resume playing inside the house going in closets and dresser drawers fascinated by all the old things from my mom's and aunts' childhood we could find. Old photos, dolls, toys were so much fun to see. My uncle's childhood bedroom was downstairs and the windows looked out onto the front porch so when we were in there we could hear the adults talking. His room was dark and had over sized mahogany furniture in it, including a giant wardrobe that was kind of scary to two little girls. We would only go in that room to hear if the adults were about finished talking and we might be heading back into town for home. Sometimes we would bring our pajamas and we would take turns bathing in the old white claw foot tub. That was a treat!

Before heading out the door I would always ask Nanny for biscuits to take home with me. I wanted one in my hand (to eat now!) and four in a brown paper bag to eat with my family for breakfast the next morning.

Remembering things like this makes me hope that I am helping to build wonderful memories for my boys that someday they will pass along to their children. Maybe the years have brought changes, but the family bond should stay just as strong as it ever has been.

Times they are a changin'

Pharmacy has always been to me a wonderful profession. Years ago the Pharmacist dispensed odd concoctions under a shroud of secrecy to patient patients. These days patients are rarely patient. We live in a world that expects everything fast and cheap and unfortunately the pharmacy profession has bought into this mentality and has followed suit. No longer is a pharmacy used to purchase wonderful healing medications guided by the knowledge and friendliness of the local Pharmacist. Today, most people expect to rush through a drive thru window and get what they need and expect it to be cheap. The Pharmacist is expected to work longer hours and with less technician support than ever before in spite of increasing consumer demand for quick service. When is it going to be enough? What will it take for the Pharmacy professionals to stand up and get society's attention and realize that faster isn't always better? (After all, fast food might taste good, but it certainly isn't good for you!) Respect for the Pharmacist has declined over the years and severely so just since I graduated in 1989. The Pharmacist is a public servant, true...but with the onslaught of bigger and better, faster and cheaper, the respect for the knowledge and caring nature of the Pharmacist has dwindled. Chain stores offer a 15 minute guarantee for prescriptions. This isn't a pizza you're ordering people...it's for your health! The Pharmacist needs to review your profile, scan for drug-drug interactions, make sure the dosing is appropriate and many other things (including sorting out your insurance) before we just "hand it to you". This is sad. I genuinely love what I do but the rush, rush of retail simply wore me out over a 15 year period of time. I wish patients had a better understanding of what goes on behind the counter. We are people too and we really do want what is best for you.

The last two years, I have been working in the hospital environment and it is a challenge but I love it! Pharmacists are much more respected in the hospital and people actually care what we have to say. Pharmacists make recommendations all the time about patient therapy and dosage adjustments and our knowledge is utilized so much more. In addition, I am essentially going back to school. I borrowed a colleague's 4-inch thick Therapeutics book and dove straight in! It frightens me sometimes to realize just how much of my education I haven't used over the years and if you don't use it, you lose it! It feels good to use my brain more these days. I had sort of fallen into a rut over the years simply counseling patients. Believe me, I enjoy speaking to patients very much, but the clinical knowledge and wording of things definitely goes by the wayside during patient counseling. I am eager to learn (and remember) new things these days. but, a part of me will always be unsure of myself. I need to work on my self-confidence. I believe that I may know the answers, but am afraid to speak up for fear of being wrong. This will get better with time. Until then...off to read about Hypovolemia and Septic Shock. Funny, I don't remember the type being so tiny when I was reading this book at age 21...

The front window of my family's drug store. Our church steeple can be seen in the window reflection.

My parents standing in the store in front of my dad's antique bottle collection.

Me (ca. 1984), standing in front of the soda fountain of my parent's drugstore.

Where to begin?

I used to write all the time. I used to write poetry... What happened to me? Where did my creativity go and did it actually die? I don't really remember. I went to Pharmacy school and somewhere along that line, my creative thoughts were buried under thick books and labs. Don't get me wrong... I love what I do and wouldn't trade my career as a Pharmacist for anything (well, maybe an all-expenses paid villa in Italy and lifelong salary comfort, but I digress...). I enjoy being a Pharmacist. I guess in that sense I am really lucky because I have so many friends and colleagues who have no idea still what they want to do in life and we're all in our early to mid forties! I have always known what I wanted to be when I grew up. Early on, I was exposed to pharmacy by growing up around my family's drug store in what used to be a fairly small town. My grandfather was a Pharmacist and started the family business and my father took it over when PaPa became sick in the 1970's. I think my family always hoped I would eventually graduate from pharmacy school and continue the family tradition but that was not to be. Once I moved away to attend college, my life was in a new city and I did not desire to return to my hometown. It was a huge guilt-ridden struggle for several years trying to help my parents understand why I could not come home and save the family business. I am after all, a very nostalgic person and tradition and family are very important to me. But, times were changing and local independent pharmacies were having a tough time surviving in the world taken over by big box superstores. The family business was sold two years ago and my parents no longer have the headache and heartache of owning a business. But, my Dad is still working a few days a week because pharmacy is his life. It is what he knows, loves and feels comfortable around too. He will be 71 years old this year. I admire his tenacity but I surely don't plan to be working at his age. Hopefully I won't have to.