Meds on TV

I've learned a lot about medications in the last two years. One of the unexpected side effects is that sometimes I recognize the names of drugs on TV shows. It gave me a chuckle last year when a couple of characters on CSI were all freaked out about a coworker taking zolpidem. Uh, zolpidem is Ambien, folks. There are only about a bajillion Americans on that stuff.



The one that made me smile tonight was Eleventh Hour. (Yes, I know today is Tuesday and it runs on Thursday. I'm a little behind on my Tivo watching.) Toward the end of the episode Hood found a bottle of pills. He rattled them and then said it was anti-tumor necrosis factor. Sounds fancy, huh? Know what that is? Remicade, Humira, or Cimzia. Know what's even funnier? To the best of my knowledge, anti-TNF doesn't come in pill form. Remicade is administered by IV and Humira and Cimzia are both injections. After watching the episode I deleted it, like most everything else. I tried to recover it to watch that scene again, but it was gone. I wanted to double check, because the character had pancreatic cancer. According to a quick online check, anti-TNF would not be used as a treatment for that. It's TNF that's used to treat cancer. It's still given by injection, though.



I haven't watched it in a couple of months, but I've also noticed that the same characters throw out the same possible diagnoses every week on House. And they like to prescribe Imuran (azathioprine) and Prednisone. Been on both of those, too.

I'm not sure what it says about me that I recognize so many meds on TV. Either I take too many medications or I watch too much TV. Or possibly both.