Between staying home and wearing masks, no one in our house has been sick since that dimly remembered time in the winter of 2019. No stomach bugs, no colds, and I haven’t missed it. Some of my most memorable parenting moments involve cleaning up after sick kids. Not this year! We were often anxious, but we were not sick.

Then, I changed some of my meds around in the past couple of weeks. For that first week, I felt like a superhero who tired really easily. But this past week, I was intermittently on the sofa or in bed with dizziness, nausea, and headaches.

Those are all possible side effects from a couple of my meds, one of which is a chemo drug which is also used to treat autoimmune inflammatory stuff. It has all the side effects you would expect from chemo. I wasn’t completely sure it was the culprit, though. Maybe I made myself sick by changing too many things at once, or somehow overdosing on the supplements I’d added.

Every day this past week I woke up feeling weird. Every day, the physical cost of minimally taking care of the kids was ending with me in tears with an intractable headache, unable to be touched by late afternoon. (Note: kids do not understand not touching).

After a week of being barely functional, I slept for 13 hours the other night. I woke up feeling better the next morning and walked with a backpack full of pill bottles to my pharmacy.

One time at the pharmacy window, I saw an older man pull out a bag of meds. The pharmacist looked at all of them and helped the guy understand what he was taking and when he should take it.

How many times have you picked up a prescription at the pharmacy and checked that little box that said you decline to consult with the pharmacist? If you’re like me, it’s nearly every time.

Watching the pharmacist patiently teaching the man about his meds, I mentally filed this very useful service away until the day when I took advantage of it myself.

The pharmacist quickly sorted out the meds I’d brought, asked a few questions, and answered a few questions. He was sure if I was experiencing side effects, it was Methotrexate (the chemo drug, which is taken once a week and which I had taken an hour before the symptoms started.) But he also said there was a virus going around with all the symptoms I’d mentioned, and the bug was lasting for a couple of weeks.

As I was writing this, it occurred to me: When he said “something was going around,” could he have been talking about COVID? Was it like in Harry Potter where no was willing to say Lord Voldermort’s name out loud? It didn’t sound like he was being sarcastic or ironic. I’m not feverish and my smeller still works… plus I’m vaccinated.

My logical mind said, if he was talking about the pandemic, he would have said so. But Anxiety wouldn’t stop squawking. A few days before, I’d read an article about a vaccinated woman who tested positive for COVID, and … the damage was done. So I went to my hospital and got a COVID test, and quarantined until I got the results, which were negative.

The consultation with the pharmacist was free. I didn’t have to make an appointment, and I got information about how and when to take my meds, how best to mitigate side effects, and found out about the community bug. I felt like I should have had to pay for that level of value. I also felt like the information I got could only be provided by a pharmacist who works in the community.

This year I switched from a pharmacy on a main road to a smaller local pharmacy. The big pharmacy was convenient, but they weren’t compliant with the mask mandate at the height of the pandemic, except for days when their security guard was there, a harried supervisor explained with a frustrated shrug. Somehow, the security guard was never there when I was.

Having a smaller pharmacy has meant shorter lines. It’s also meant my pharmacy staff actually seems to know who I am. The pharmacist isn’t on the phone arguing with someone or helping another customer every time I come in, so he actually has time to talk to me.

Your pharmacy might not be the kind of place where it seems easy or convenient to walk up to the counter and ask to speak to the pharmacist. Maybe you don’t even have prescription meds. But if you made it to this point, maybe you’ll remember someday about the free resource your local pharmacist provides, and be able to take advantage of it one day when you need it.

The headaches are still intermittently smacking me down.  I dearly hope there will be more tired superhero weeks ahead and fewer like the one I just had.

Truth: I delayed publication of this post until I had test results, even though I knew it wasn’t COVID, because there was a tiny chance it COULD be. There is still the twitchy part of me that is ready with the fight or flight response at the slightest pandemic-related provocation.