Did I remember to take my medication last night? I remembered, I think, but is this a memory of having remembered other times – a composite image of taking my pills twice a day, 365 days a year? Or do I remember the actual event of consuming my medication last night?
I search my mind, vividly imagining the two white pills, one being small and round, the other shaped like a caplet of Tylenol. I visualize my hands removing the bottle caps, taking out each pill and laying them on the couch beside my left thigh – a repetitive ritual initiated by me twice a day, once in the morning and once at night, rarely with any variation. I pick up and place the round tablet on the back of my tongue, and then the caplet, washing them back with some cold water, to descend my throat and do their thing, which is to lower blood pressure, slow heart rate, and eliminate palpitations.
Yep, these little white pills maintain my vitals within survivable limits, at least for the short-term. The chance that I will drop dead from a missed dose is probably minimal, but PROBABLY is a scary, uncertain word for me, always has been. I try to remember what I did before and after my pill taking ritual, looking for that smoking gun that tells me, “Yes, I took my medication!” But, I receive nothing, other than a continued mental visualization of what maybe occurred, based on memories of past occurrences – a recycling of old memories, so to speak.
The paperwork says to skip the dose if you forget to take it on time. Wait until your next scheduled dose to resume medicating yourself. Never double up on it! Yet, what could happen between the missed dose and the next dose? They don’t spell that out for me. The pharmaceutical companies don’t know what COULD happen over a missed dose, and so they gloss over that in the paperwork.
It could be that mere worrying gives me an anxiety attack, or creates psychosomatic symptoms that mimic the effect I fear most – death! Despite that, I can’t remember whether I digested those damn pills. The threat of imminent hospitalization or death does not scare me into retrieving an accurate, detailed memory of what I ACTUALLY did or didn’t do. Instead, a mental image or visualization of my pill taking ritual has taken precedence over my memory; the details of last night either not recorded, disposed of after a short time, or absorbed into that visualization, courtesy of my brain’s memory management system and protocols. If you pointed a gun to my head and demanded an immediate recap of what happened or didn’t happen, I still could not remember whether I’d consumed the medication.
So, I asked my wife, “Honey, did I take my pills last night?”
She responded affirmatively, “Yes, I was right here when you took them.”
“Are you sure that you saw me take them?” asking for reassurance sake.
“I’m PRETTY SURE that you took them,” she said. “Why would you not take them? You always remember to take them.”
Not very reassuring, huh? Had her brain presented her with a similar visualization of what I usually do, 99 percent of the time, rather than an actual memory of it? Or was she remembering a specific pill taking episode? She doesn’t know, not for sure! This reminds me of those “almost like butter” advertisements. It looks like butter, tastes like butter, but it is not butter. You would never know it was not butter, without seeing the details, in this case the ingredients. Our brains are tricksters!
I go back over the scene again in my mind, searching for some anomaly or unusual detail that accompanied my most recent pill taking ritual; looking for evidence of some kind that proves – in my mind – without a reasonable doubt, that I most likely ingested my medication.
Ok, this is what I’ve come up with. Here is my circumstantial evidence:
1) I remember the bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream I consumed as a prelude to taking my pills. Nothing else was available at the time, other than 5 day old pizza in the refrigerator, and my medication requires the accompaniment of food or milk. I despise the flavor of toothpaste in my ice cream, but there was no other choice, and the reaction of my taste buds is not something easily forgotten in the short-term. In fact, I still vividly recall wanting to choke on the taste and consistency of the ice cream. The sight of the green, mint stained bowl in the sink continues to refire the memory of it, so vivid that my stomach turns and churns with it. So yes, this memory is a no-doubter!
2) After finishing that nasty bowl of mint ice cream, I discovered a fleck of something floating in the cup of water that was to be used to wash down my pills. Obviously, last night was destined to go badly. What the heck was in my water? A particle of dust or dandruff? A dead bug? A fragment of mint – eww? Whatever it was, it needed to to be removed. I washed out the cup in the kitchen sink, refilled it with fresh water, and returned it to the coffee table by the couch. You are probably thinking, “Big deal, finding something in a cup of water is a common occurrence in the world, don’t get so bent out of shape dude.” And you are right, but this minor glitch in my routine, this “second” disgusting moment, was nasty enough to be remembered. It is a standout moment, at least for the short-term, and thus it is temporarily etched in the soft clay of my brain as something that happened.
So, what do these two events prove? They prove my INTENT to medicate – AHA! Both the ice cream and water were preparations for the taking of pills, and I remember both events clearly, up until returning the water filled cup to the coffee table. So, case closed, right?
Hmm, nope, these are not genuine “aha” moments. Intent does not prove the commission of an act. I cannot remember what happened, if anything, after returning the cup of water to the coffee table by the couch. Did I reach for my little blue bag that contains my two bottles of pills? Or did the toothpaste flavored ice cream and dirty water throw off my routine? If I retrieved the blue bag, then I surely followed through by taking the medication, right? Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe…maybe not. There is no real proof here of anything, except intent of course.
Again, I scan my memory for details of that moment, when I SHOULD have taken my pills. I attempt to connect the dots between the ice cream and dirty water, between anything that might fill that gap of missing details, something clearly pointing to the consummation of my pill taking ritual. What was I watching on TV at the time? What was I thinking about? Is there any detail, no matter how insignificant, that brings that critical moment – the ingestion of medication – into focus? Nope, nothing! No details return. I get nothing but that basic, no frills, no details visualization of my pill taking routine; a brain sponsored reenactment of something I’ve done redundantly, twice a day, 365 days a year for the past several years; a rehashing of steps, complete with a few simple visualizations of a blue pill case, two bottles, two pills, and a cup of clean water.
My brain is content to depict “David Rubin’s Pill Taking Routine,” something you might find in a book titled, “Pill taking for dummies!” This is not an actual memory though, but rather an image or visual that my brain constructed from a scrap heap of archived memories related to my past experiences with medication. My brain delivering its own streamlined, artistic rendition of what PROBABLY happened last night.
I have a suggestion, Mr. Brain. How about including a disclaimer with images that are not actual memories? Something like, “This image is for entertainment purposes only. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All images are composites culled from 55+ years of junk (memories) that your brain collected, dissected, and reorganized with similar junk.”
I’m being funny of course. My brain is doing its job, which is to efficiently manage the space reserved for memories. This means making decisions as to what is kept as an exact recording, and what is archived away in some stripped down form, to be accessed or recycled later in the construction of mental images, stories, daydreams, fantasies, hallucinations, etc. The problem being that I often confuse the recycled images or visualization with actual recordings – detailed memories of people, things, places, and situations that existed in actuality.
Like most of us, I expect Mr. brain to record the minutiae of every person, place, thing, situation, and event in my life; and keep those memories safe from the wear and tear of time and other adverse conditions. Obviously though, my brain has its own way of doing things and it doesn’t take requests nor care about my expectations. If I don’t make the effort to record details and store them for safe keeping, then my brain, like the public sanitation truck, will pick up whatever memories are left unattended, sort them out, maybe melt them down, and store the transformed product to only God knows where – maybe the neuroscientists know where by now. And if an old memory is requested but not available any longer, Mr. Brain will replace it with a convincing story or scene, such as the recycled visualization of my “usual” pill taking routine. Although, in this case, it was not convincing enough, maybe because I worry too much about being deceived. I need proof! Where are the details?
© 2019 David M. Rubin. All rights reserved.
Notes from David 