learn what your name means day

march 5th is also saint piran's day. if you're lame and don't know who saint piran IS (like myself), he is the patron saint of tin-miners, and also cornwall. so all you cornish tin-miners go ahead and take the day off. i wonder if there's a patron saint for irish/norwegian/english pharmacy technicians? hmmm...

yay for wikipedia! however often it may contain inaccurate facts, it is always there for me when i need to find obscure and random things.

there IS a patron saint for pharmacists. i give you SAINTS COSMAS AND DAMIAN! according to wikipedia, here's there sad story:

"During the persecution under Diocletian, Cosmas and Damian were arrested by order of the Prefect of Cilicia, one Lysias who is otherwise unknown, who ordered them under torture to recant. However, according to legend they stayed true to their faith, enduring a series of gruesome tortures that did not harm them, and finally suffered execution by beheading. Anthimus, Leontius and Euprepius, their younger brothers, who were inseparable from them throughout life, shared in their martyrdom.
Their most famous miraculous exploit was the grafting of a leg from a recently deceased Ethiopian to replace a patient's ulcered leg, and was the subject of many paintings and illuminations."

you know, all in all, it's not much different from the daily lives of many pharmacists. "under torture to recant" can be compared to "being yelled at for charging a different copay than last month when really it's the same." the gruesome, but harmless, tortures, sounds very much like staying on hold for a half an hour with an insurance company so some newbie insurance agent can figure out what an ID number is. beheading? oh, there are definitely days when i'm afraid some of those middle-aged women will cut my head off if they don't get there hormone replacement therapy ASAP.

so here's to you cosmas and damian. little known and probably underappreciated in the saint world, but you paved the way for suffering pharmacy staff!