Last week I went to see a range of doctors because I wasn’t feeling well and we all know that that is the only surefire way to guarantee one spends exorbitant amounts of money to be told what ISN’T wrong with your body. Finally a doctor actually gave me a diagnosis and I need an operation to release a pinched nerve in my right side. I was prescribed medication to help with the pain but it made me drowsy (I am using the term “drowsy” here in the sense of “unintentional power naps during peak hour traffic”). Two days (and countless power naps) later I was prescribed a non-drowsy painkiller which I’d never heard of before but I took two and hoped for the best.
Later that day I experienced some unusual reactions to the medication so I read the medicine’s information leaflet to find out whether I should be pre-booking a bed in a nearby emergency room. Now I’m the type of girl that is easily given to excessive anxiety so I really shouldn’t watch CSI late at night or read these medication leaflets because it seems they’re there to inform you that the medication you’re taking is trying to kill your pain and many of your vital bodily functions and/or organs simultaneously. This particular leaflet informed me that some of the medication’s side effects were nausea, vomiting, skin rash, vertigo, severe liver damage, circulatory failure, deepening coma, euphoria, scintillating scotoma, a passion for country music, plus a myriad of other horrific side effects including an unbridled desire to listen to David Hasselhoff CDs. Just to be fair, these leaflets should state under their Storage Instructions: “Store below 25°C. Protect from light, moisture and the human body”!!
But it was too late, I’d already taken the pills 3 hours earlier and I had some of the side effects to prove it. Thoroughly convinced that my future existence was being seriously threatened by the onset of an unfamiliar destructive force described in the leaflet as “scintillating scotoma”, I was on the cusp of a full-blown emotional overreaction rarely seen outside of American reality tv shows. The cherry on top was the closing line of the leaflet which said “Warning Note: Do not take within 4 hours before or after.” Before or after WHAT? A meal, operating heavy machinery, an episode of CSI?!?!!? Come on Medical Leaflet Writing People is it too much to ask that you finish life-threatening sentences!?
Obviously my point is that we should all be deeply concerned about the widespread plummeting standard of English in the leaflet-writing industry. These grammatically lackadaisical people have already infiltrated the instruction manual business. Just the other day I bought a small hydraulic stepper to exercise with at home and its instruction manual states “When exercise don't shake your top body, and rhythmicity doing. After you are in practice, you can accord the usual ways to exercise or aerobic.” Ahem, say what now?
What the world needs now is a hero who will teach these people to write properly before, God forbid; they are hired by terrorists with access to nuclear weapons or, even worse, David Hasselhoff CDs. They’d threaten the world with a Nuclear Attack Warning that would probably say “We are going to nuke you if you do not meet our demands within 4 hours before or after.”
Later that day I experienced some unusual reactions to the medication so I read the medicine’s information leaflet to find out whether I should be pre-booking a bed in a nearby emergency room. Now I’m the type of girl that is easily given to excessive anxiety so I really shouldn’t watch CSI late at night or read these medication leaflets because it seems they’re there to inform you that the medication you’re taking is trying to kill your pain and many of your vital bodily functions and/or organs simultaneously. This particular leaflet informed me that some of the medication’s side effects were nausea, vomiting, skin rash, vertigo, severe liver damage, circulatory failure, deepening coma, euphoria, scintillating scotoma, a passion for country music, plus a myriad of other horrific side effects including an unbridled desire to listen to David Hasselhoff CDs. Just to be fair, these leaflets should state under their Storage Instructions: “Store below 25°C. Protect from light, moisture and the human body”!!
But it was too late, I’d already taken the pills 3 hours earlier and I had some of the side effects to prove it. Thoroughly convinced that my future existence was being seriously threatened by the onset of an unfamiliar destructive force described in the leaflet as “scintillating scotoma”, I was on the cusp of a full-blown emotional overreaction rarely seen outside of American reality tv shows. The cherry on top was the closing line of the leaflet which said “Warning Note: Do not take within 4 hours before or after.” Before or after WHAT? A meal, operating heavy machinery, an episode of CSI?!?!!? Come on Medical Leaflet Writing People is it too much to ask that you finish life-threatening sentences!?
Obviously my point is that we should all be deeply concerned about the widespread plummeting standard of English in the leaflet-writing industry. These grammatically lackadaisical people have already infiltrated the instruction manual business. Just the other day I bought a small hydraulic stepper to exercise with at home and its instruction manual states “When exercise don't shake your top body, and rhythmicity doing. After you are in practice, you can accord the usual ways to exercise or aerobic.” Ahem, say what now?
What the world needs now is a hero who will teach these people to write properly before, God forbid; they are hired by terrorists with access to nuclear weapons or, even worse, David Hasselhoff CDs. They’d threaten the world with a Nuclear Attack Warning that would probably say “We are going to nuke you if you do not meet our demands within 4 hours before or after.”
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