Story of the day 12/ 19/ 2008

My husband gets a huge number of calls, at work, but mercifully the nurses and clerical staff handle most of them. A tiny percentage of the total onslaught gets forwarded to his voice mail.
He was surprised when he received a message from a reporter at the New York Times who wanted to interview him.

Between the time he got that voice mail, and the time he actually connected with her, he had tried unsuccessfully to guess what the NY Times could be calling about, but each of his guesses were wrong.

The reporter was interested in pens; drug company pens, the free pens that are a staple of doctors and dentists offices, of nursing stations and ER rooms across the country.
You see, in just another few days, those pens will become extinct.
They will still be there- for a while. The old ones haven’t yet drawn their last inky breathe, but there will be no replacements, so their days are numbered.
You see, drug companies have decided that these ubiquitous advertisements for Viagra, Claritin, Hismanil, etc…well, it is too blatant a bribe, or some-such- and the drug companies will no longer distribute them.

What does this mean for you, the consumer? It means that the fun purple pen that you accidentally put in your pocket the last time you were at the internist may be the very last time that the doctor’s office leaves them lying around so freely.

Other than that? Well, I am not sure it means much- other than being the end of an era.

And why did this reporter from New York City want to speak with Dr. Larry Greenbaum of Indianapolis, Indiana?
For his Midwestern perspective on this issue?

Well, not exactly.
You see, in researching the topic, she came across an article written specifically on drug company pens. This article was published in a British medical journal named The Lancet.

The Lancet didn’t’ have any biographical information about the author, but she was able to Google this British writer and found out that he practiced medicine in one of the colonies…well, at any rate, in Indianapolis. Hence, the call.

In the end, my husband and she connected and had a lovely talk about drug company pens, socks, umbrellas, and a host of other odd items. And we are eager to see him in print, our very own drug company pen expert.

Now, despite his strong Midwestern accent (not), my husband is originally from new York. In fact, his parents and his sister and brother-in-law are still New Yorkers.
Every Sunday, my husband calls his parents to chat. This Sunday, he figured he had something interesting to share with them.

“Mom, Dad, I had a phone call from the New York Times, on Friday.”
After hearing this, my startled mother-in-law wanted to know why they had called him, all the way out in Indianapolis, about the problems she is having with her subscription!