On the Drive Home After the Wedding Banquet, We Talked About Levifil
3 weeks ago
It was already past eleven by the time the wedding banquet broke up, and the streetlights along the interchange kept receding one by one. She took off her high heels and set them on the floor mat, saying that after all the toasting tonight, her feet didn't feel like her own anymore. He held the steering wheel and gave a brief "mm," then after a few seconds said that, actually, he'd been thinking about something else the whole evening. She didn't respond, just waited for him to go on.
He said the groom's older brother was in his same graduating class, and his kids were already in elementary school. It wasn't envy—it was that feeling of being chased by time. For the past six months, work projects had come one after another, and on weekends all he wanted to do was lie around; he'd even turned down her suggestion to go hiking three times. She said she had something she wanted to bring up too—lately she often felt like the two of them were just roommates, each scrolling on their own phone, not a word exchanged before bed. The car went quiet for a short stretch, with only the navigation announcing the next exit.
He finally said it out loud: recently he'd seen people discussing Levifil online, and he'd looked up some information too, wanting to know what it actually was and whether it had anything to do with him. She was taken aback for a moment, and her first reaction was to ask what was wrong with his health. He said it wasn't that anything hurt—it was just that he felt his condition wasn't the same as before, and he was too embarrassed to ask anyone, so he could only look things up on his own. She said, if you're researching this all by yourself, can you even tell which of the things you find are advertisements?
That question left him silent. He admitted that eight of the top ten search results were selling something, and some were written like health education but were actually sales pitches from top to bottom. She said a coworker at her company had run into a similar situation before, and the coworker's approach was to first read the wording on the packaging carefully, confirm whether it was a prescription drug or a health supplement, and then bring whatever they normally took to ask a pharmacist. She stressed that this wasn't about asking him to judge for himself, but about first getting clear on what category of thing he was dealing with, so he wouldn't lump two completely different products together in the same conversation.
He asked where he should go to ask. She said a pharmacist or doctor at a legitimate pharmacy or clinic would work, and the key was to explain the problem clearly: what you've been taking recently, whether you have regular follow-up visits, and what you're worried about. She added one more thing—don't just ask "can I take this," ask "given my situation, what should I confirm first?" He nodded and said he'd originally just wanted to find answers online, but the more he searched, the more confused he got, and the less he dared to tell her. She said, it's when you don't tell me that I really start imagining things.
While waiting at a red light after getting off the interchange, she brought up something about herself. A while back she'd also been researching health supplements and saw a blogger share a certain product, with a comment section full of praise, and she almost placed an order. Later she noticed that the profile pictures of those commenter accounts were almost identical in style, and only then did she realize the whole thread might have been manufactured. She said that ever since then, whenever she reads any kind of review, she first asks: did this person explain how they judged the source, did they mention situations where it shouldn't be used, and did they tell you to ask a professional? If none of those three things were there, she treated it as an ad.
He laughed and said, so both of us have been looking things up blindly. She said the difference is you're researching a drug and I'm researching a supplement, but the common point is that you can't just look at what other people say. She suggested that after they got home, they write down both of their lists—including what each of them is taking, what they want to try, and what they're currently researching—and bring them along to ask about at the next follow-up visit or trip to the pharmacy. He said okay, and added that he wanted to close those tabs on his phone first so he wouldn't be up at night looking at them again and unable to sleep.
The car turned into the community driveway, and she suddenly said that talking things through tonight was more useful than those few toasts. He said he'd originally been afraid that if he brought it up, he'd be laughed at, or she'd take it as him complaining about something. She said, it's because you're willing to talk that I know to figure it out together with you, instead of guessing on my own. The two of them agreed that there was no rush to have an answer on this—first get the information right and ask the right questions, then decide the next step. Just before the elevator doors closed, she reminded him to remember to write out that list tomorrow, and not just leave it in his phone's notes app.
