Flea, Steph, and Hil all posted on FB.

Thanks so much, Tom.

Today is stressful. Still sick, got called for jury duty in a couple of weeks, the Supreme Court is a giant clusterfuck, and my brother's girlfriend got diagnosed with breast cancer a week ago.

And the juror questionnaire asks what your religion is.

I'm sorry, Dana. That is a lot of stress.

That's way too much stress, Dana.

Flea, Steph, and Hil all posted on FB.

I was in the waiting room at my therapist's office when I first read flea's post on FB (I seem to get most of my news from social media first), so I switched over to a news app. Just awful. Fucking guns, man.

And the juror questionnaire asks what your religion is.

TBD?

Speaking of painkillers, if one had happened to hang on to a couple of bottles of hardcore useful preparations, how long do they remain useful? Even a half-strength hardcore useful preparation would still be useful, unless it's going to give me unpleasantness.

My guess is that the official expiration date is probably a year after they were dispensed. That said -- with the caveat that I don't have a pharmacy or medical degree (yeah, I know that everyone knows that, but we're talking about hardcore painkillers, so I just want to emphasize that this is not backed up by a PharmD or an MD) -- with old/expired meds, generally the worst that would happen is that they lose their effectiveness. They won't turn into something that harms you.

If it were me, with the old meds, the first thing I would do is make sure they don't smell bad/look funky (like the tablet shouldn't be crumbling to powder or changed color or have mold spots or suddenly have eldritch runes appear on it). And then, honestly, I would probably take it. But I'm pretty fucking cavalier about meds.

And if you had never taken this particular preparation before, how small would you try to get the dose do you imagine? Or would you not risk it and just dispose of them? Asking for a friend.

I'm hoping I get the chance to be obnoxiously liberal. The time I was on the jury for a criminal case, I got selected because lots of people in front of me did or said things clearly designed to get out of serving. Fortunately (I guess), it was screamingly obvious that the guy was guilty.

But if they give me half a chance, I'm going to dig in about institutional racism.

I had two semi-stressful meetings in a row and no time to pee for hours and ugh. The good news is, the thing that I was pretty sure I hadn't fucked up? I hadn't fucked up! (Intimidating coworker: "I've asked and asked to be copied on these things!" Me, internally, "Ugh, I guess I fucked up yet again..." [time passes, I get back to my desk and search my email] Me, via email: Here's the email chain you were in fact copied on!!!!)

But I'm still feeling jangly and behind even though I have had lunch and a half-hour at my desk.

And if you had never taken this particular preparation before, how small would you try to get the dose do you imagine? Or would you not risk it and just dispose of them? Asking for a friend.

I would check a site like Rxlist. com to see what the starting dose is, and then split the pill accordingly (if possible).

Let's take oxycodone as an example, since my dad takes 30-mg pills of it, which is a fucking high-ass dose. But he's developed a tolerance to them over years of taking them, so he's fine when he takes a 30-mg pill (sometimes he takes 2 at a time, holy balls). Rxlist says a starting dose of oxycodone for someone who has never taken it is 10 mg every 12 hours.

It would be a pain to try to cut a 30-mg pill into thirds just to get it down to 10 mg, so if Dad had ever given me any of his oxycodone pills for something like dental pain (which I will neither confirm nor deny) I would cut a 30-mg oxycodone pill into quarters, for a dose of (roughly) 7.5 mg. And even that dose would (hypothetically, of course) make me loopy as hell.