by Melody Williams

Created on: February 13, 2009

Northeastern Pennsylvania can be brutal in January, and when February rolls around we often get a brief spring thaw. Though the warm temperatures are a welcome reprieve, it tends to cause many people to get severe colds. My husband was no exception a few years ago, and was suffering miserably with a sinus infection and chest cold.

The typical man he is, he refused to go to the doctor. I had visited the dentist a few days prior and just so happened to have a few penicillin left in a small envelope the dentist had given me. I thought perhaps they might help his illnesses, so I told him they were on top of the refrigerator in front of my brown bottle of Estrogen. He began taking the pills and after a couple of days he didn't seem to be getting any better.

As my two teenage sons and I sat down for supper a few nights later my husband joined us at the table after retrieving a glass of water. He placed a bottle of pills next to his plate and prepared to take one. My eyes grew large at the sight and I said, "You can't take those!" He responded, "why not, I have been taking them for two days." At this point my sons both fell to the floor laughing hysterically. I smiled, tried to keep my demeanor, and asked, "How many have you taken?" With a look of fear and confusion on his face he responded, "I took one three times a day." I then joined my sons in hysterical laughter. My husband sheepishly looked at all of us, then looked at the the bottle, which read Premarin. (A form of Estrogen) Needless to say, he realized he had not listened to my directions in their entirety two days before, and had only heard brown bottle on the refrigerator. Thus he had taken 6 estrogen pills in two day. (The dosage for women is one a day)

After a good ten minutes of gut wrenching laughter, I was finally able to get a little composure and decided it might be a good idea to call a nurse friend and see if it was going to hurt him. She also went into hysterical laughter, but through her laughter I managed to catch "he'll be fine, but you might want to watch to see if he grows breasts!" This brought on an onslaught of more tear filled laughter from my sons as well as myself. My husband did not find the humor in it, however, after that he DID check labels on all the medicines he took.

As the days passed he did not grow breasts, thought he received a lot of taunting from his sons. He did, however, start to act like a woman with very bad PMS. He seemed to find fault with everything and everyone and was very grumpy. Often yelling everyone for no apparent reason. Of course my sons and I found this too, to be very funny and he was teased even more. He eventually started to see the humor in how he was acting and had to laughhimself. After about three days the medicine cleared out of his system and he was back to normal.

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