Embarrassment

I was just now thinking about what would constitute the most embarrassing situation "Ever!"

Here is a possible candidate.

Our subject is a young bachelor just out of school, who lives in his first apartment by himself and is for the most part situational celibate. The situation that causes this is that he is afraid to ask women out because he is afraid of rejection. Until one day he get’s lucky and it boosts his confidence enough that he gets lucky again a week later.

A few days later he is cleaning his place and he finds a very sexy bra and panties under the towels in the bathroom. He is going over things in his mind and he figures out who they must belong to, so he puts them into a paper bag and casually drops them on her desk the next morning when he goes to work.

About an hour later said young lady storms up to his desk and very dramatically pours the contents of the bag on his desk from as far up as she can reach, simultaneously stating in a very loud voice, "They’re not mine!"

At this point you could hear a mouse burp should one have choosen to do so, anywhere in the very large office.

At times like this one thinks very fast and he was pretty sure after a few seconds that he has thought of all the horrible repercussions that could possibly stem from this the ultimate faux pas.

Of course as you might expect, he was wrong. Because, this is the time when the woman in the next cubicle walks over and says in very loud voice, "They’re mine."

He spends the rest of the day on the Internet researching monasteries and once he leaves the office he is never seen or heard from again.

The one and only good thing about this entire situation is that it wasn’t me………

Uncle Dave

Over Cooked Insulin

OK, the VA is doing something that makes no sense again. Some entity in the huge bureaucracy that is the United States Department of Defense Veteran’s Administration has decided that in order to save money they will mail out all Novolin 70/30 insulin without any special packaging to keep it cool. Insulin is very temperature sensitive and can be made to be ineffective if stored at high temperatures.

About a week ago I got a package of what I assumed was insulin in the mail. It wasn’t in the big bulky foam box and didn’t have the weight of something containing jell packs that I expected with insulin shipments. I had taken this package out of my big black mailbox on the side of the road that was of course just setting there in the hot sun. Since the package didn’t seem to have any temperature control packing, I went back to the house, got an oven thermometer and set it in the mailbox for a few minutes. According to the thermometer the temperature was 140 degrees Fahrenheit in my mailbox. Well above the temperature that the insulin can successfully withstand and still remain viable.

According to what I was told by a pharmacist at Birmingham VAMC (on the phone,) the entity that made the decision about no special packaging for shipping had tested the Novolin 70/30 up to 35 degrees Celsius which equates to 95 degrees Fahrenheit. This is well below the temperatures to be found on a typical Summer day in Alabama. On the day I took the insulin out of the mailbox the ambient temperature in my area had remained over 100 degrees for several hours.

The package I took from the mailbox contained 6 10ml bottles of Novolin 70/30 Insulin with a commercial cost of approximately $25.00/bottle. Multiply that by all the other orders that were sent out during that hot spell and you get a lot of money wasted through the lack of proper packaging. Not to mention all the veterans who thought they were taking a medication that would help them cope with their diabetes, but were not receiving the benefits they assumed they were.

My doctor has been on me lately about poor control of my sugar level. I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason might not be the use of over-heated insulin?

Sadly, it was made pretty clear to me by the people at the BVMAC Pharmacy that despite what I had told them this was a matter of "Policy" and nothing I had said would change anything.

I’m hoping that among the people out there who might read this is someone who can facilitate a change.

Uncle Dave
Attalla, Alabama
US Navy 1968-1979