PHARMACISTS, NURSES, AND BRAINS [T, 4-26-22]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

After that episode about the meaning of life with Nurse Olivia--that I wrote about a month or so ago, when I explained to her, at her request, sort of, that the purpose of life is to have a good time--I went to CVS to get a prescription. When the pharmacy tech asked if I had any questions, I posed the same one to her that I had to Nurse O, which Nurse O had turned back on me: What is the meaning of Life? The tech replied, “The purpose of life this week is not to kill my teenaged children.” When I explained that if she were patient long enough, they would cease being teens, she did not seem much mollified.

Speaking of CVS: Friends from Terre Haute [IN] visited 4-12. We told them of getting our 2^nd anti-virus boosters at the CVS in the Target store here. They said they had gone to a CVS in Terre Haute to get boosted but the pharmacist told them he would not give them the shot. He said that he and some other pharmacists in Terre Haute had decided the boosters would do no good and might do harm and so they would not give them. At least, that’s what he gave as his reason for refusal. But this is Indiana, where people divide into Republicans and Democrats over what color the sky is, so who knows? Anyway, our friends got their booster shots at a walk-in clinic at the health dept.

Speaking of Nurse Olivia, I was back at Dr. V’s for a regular appointment. Nurse O is young, and so likes to hear me talk about obscure stuff. I asked her if she knew that one of the best and most simple things you can do for brain health is to yawn. No, she had not known that, and I explained that I had not either, until I read it in How God Changes Your Brain, by Anthony Newberg, MD, and Mark Robert Waldman. She said that she would like to read that book, so I thought I could save her some time by explaining brain anatomy, including the anterior cingulate, where, theologically speaking, prevenient grace resides. I also described the hippocampus, where hippos sit reading philosophy under trees, and stroll hand in hand with their girlfriends, like any other campus. She said, “It sounds very interesting, in your brain.”

John Robert McFarland