View From the Bushes

So I went to the optometrist and she figured that it was allergies, which is kind of unusual since thus far I haven't been allergic to anything. Although looking at the brochure she gave me, I do appear to have all the symptoms, and it would be nice if the eyedrops she perscribed cleared the problem up. Course, I didn't say that it would be cheap...

She prescribed Patanol, 5 ml, which is suppossed to last me two weeks. With my insurance it was $16.48; without any sort of insurance it's $82.69. Each ml conveniently contains 1 mg of the active ingrediant (olopatadine), so divide $82.69/5 which equals $16.538, and then times that by 1000 and you get a product that's a mere $16,538/gram or 16.5 million dollars/kilogram or 7.5 million dollars/lb for those more confortable with English measurement. This calculation has exacerbated what was already a fairly substantial reluctance to use eye-drops. I mean it's bad enough trying to stick something in your eye, a task your body rebels against with every reflex at its command, but imagine that the stuff you're putting in is far too expensive to waste on an aborted effort?

Tour-wise, my man Ullrich managed to put 37 seconds into Rasmussen which means his deficit has been reduced to 2'12". On the initial time trial of 19 km, Ullrich managed to put 2'6" into Rasmussen. Saturday's time trial is 55.5 km so it's hard to imagine that Rasmussen will be up to the task of keeping his spot on the podium, particularly since Ullrich appears to have peaked (which generally happens for him in the latter half of the tour).

I leave you with a link to a story on a 1191 lb shark which lost the "monster shark derby" because the ship that caught it was 6 minutes late.

Amazed at the price of drugs
Ross