Tuesday at lunch Rich’s phone rang; it was a nurse from Sarah Cannon. “So I have a strange question … what color are the pills you’re taking now?” she casually asked. “Yellow. They used to be gray but this last time they were yellow. I thought that was strange but figured the color didn’t matter,” Rich replied. “Oh …. yeah, about that.” And that’s when we found out that the pharmacist had accidentally given Rich pills which were 150mg each instead of 75mg each. Since January 8th, Rich has been taking 300mg of his meds a day instead of 150mg. And from January 8th through January 29th while he dutifully took those pills, the Stryker house has been under a lot of stress.

The good news is the study has lots of data on what happens when you jump from 150mg to 300mg all at once. The bad news is that side effects include constant soul-crushing emo song inspiring headaches every waking hour. A corollary to that is your wife wanting to murder you in your sleep because your way of dealing with headaches is to be an asshole for three weeks straight.

We’re all better here but January of 2014 will have a ripple effect for quite a while. Historians will one day write doctoral theses on how it shaped decisions for ages, like the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife leading to World War I.

Originally I was going on today's Nashville trip with Rich to ask in very small words what we were all going to do about these headaches. But on the day before our flight, a great mystery was solved. And so I used my time to make it very clear how unhappy we have been for 21 days. I told the doctor that the pharmacist owed us a spa weekend or perhaps an Edible Arrangement. She assured me that it was not being taken lightly and that an entire investigation was in progress. She said there may be blood stains on our next bottle of pills we receive today. We can only assume that pharmacist was killed and his head set on a pike at the desk of the new pharmacist as a reminder to check his work.

Later today, we met with the nurses and they went over all of Rich's side effects over the last month in detail. The nurse apologized again to Rich. As I was gathering our things, she told him, "I know your wife talked to Dr. Bendell about how unhappy she was and I just want you to know we're very sorry." Rich says that there is now a note in his file about his wife, much like Elaine going to the doctor on Seinfeld. I'm okay with that so long as I get my Edible Arrangement.

We are now back on track with gray pills, only occasional headaches, and the foundation of our house settling back into its original place.