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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Stray pharmaceuticals

I am imagining the scene:
The walker returns to her home after a brisk morning constitutional on the Old Croton Aqueduct during which nothing unusual happened unless you consider four white–tailed bucks –sporting their velvety springtime antler nubs - grazing by the path as unusual, and sadly for the gardeners among us, the white-tailed deer are as common as a cold. The walker pours herself a cup of coffee, sits at her kitchen table and prepares to read the latest issue of Backyard Poultry. She has heard a lot about chickens lately and has decided to acquire a pair of Rhode Island Red hens. Then the pain strikes. She doubles over as the terrible constriction spreads across her chest. But she recognizes the pain as angina and knows she has a solution: in her pocket she always carries a small bottle of sub lingual Nitrostat 0.4, otherwise known as nitroglycerin. Those little pills placed under the tongue work remarkably quickly to ease the pain. The walker reaches into her pocket for the reassuring bottle, and instead, discovers that whatever small hole was there before is now a full-grown hole, through which her tiny bottle must have escaped. Because the nitroglycerin is not there, even as the pain worsens.

This is as far as I have imagined. Because his morning while I was out walking on the aqueduct, between Washington and Pinecrest and a few dozen yards north of the ventilation tower inscribed with MARRY ME JOEL, I found a small bottle of the above-mentioned nitroglycerin. And it disturbs me to imagine that I have in my possession the means to alleviate the pain and suffering of the angina-stricken walker who preceded me on the path.
I have already called our local constabulary to alert them to my find. No ideas.What to do? Is this the same nitroglycerin that blows things up?

*"Angina is a medical term derived from the classical Greek word ankhon (ἄγχω) meaning to strangle, throttle, or choke. It may refer to a constriction in the airway or, by extension, a restriction in blood flow."

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