Granny Rehab: Chasing Quinine

There was a time when our grandmothers had a secret bottle and when their leg hurt they would take a couple of small little pills. Maybe not every day, but on occasion. And it worked- they could walk about again, go shopping. This lingered in my mind when I recently became an old woman. The leg spasms that I had not counted on after my double hip replacement hit me hard. I thought the operation would eliminate all the pain. And it has. For three blissful years I was a good as new.
Then the bones decided to settle. In this settling, kneecaps and femurs moved out of place. Pulled the muscles this way and that. The result? Once again I couldn’t walk. I lay around for a long time, and muscles got weak. Now they cramp and hurt.

When I take drugs against it, they make me sleepy, tired, and only take about 40 percent of the spasm away. I lose interest in writing when I am in pain.

Then I remembered quinine. A simple source of relief for malaria and leg cramps. I asked my doctor for a prescription. She refused. I asked why? She already gave me much stronger drugs. She had to look into it.

So did I.

When you Google up quinine pills you get first the drug companies campaign pretending to gather information about people who “got hurt by quinine.” If quinine hurts people, why wasn’t it a problem for the centuries it was already in use? Because the drug companies didn’t want something simple to cure a problem without them making profit from it.

I then read their entire advertising section. On the bottom it actually came clean, saying this is paid advertising and there is no evidence of anybody hurt or having died from quinine. Very small print.
The drug companies who didn’t really find a cure anything in the sixty-plus years I have been around.
Oh Michael Moore, you are so right. Profit before the people.
So now here I stand. Canada, which is where I buy my meds nowadays, also requires a prescription. (if you need them they are at RX Canada.com)
My doctor #14 is not in till Weds. I can only be needy on those days when they are in. I am chasing quinine, the remedy of grandmothers. Maybe we need an underground Granny Quinine network...