Ivan Miyingo Quintus

  By: MIYINGO Ivan, MPhil, B.Pharm, MPS 📖  CHAPTER THREE:  THE THINGS THEY DO NOT WANT TO HEAR There is a moment in every interaction that changes everything. It is not when the patient walks in. It is not when they describe their symptoms. It is when the truth begins to form. You can feel it before it is spoken. A slight shift in the air. A hesitation in your own voice. A quiet awareness that what you are about to say will not be received the same way it is given. Because not all truths are equal. Some are easy. “Take this twice a day.” “You’ll be fine in a few days.” These are acceptable truths. Comforting. Contained. Temporary. But then there are the other truths. The ones that do not fit into instructions. The ones that stretch beyond medicine into consequence. “This has been going on too long.” “This may not be simple.” “You need to go to a hospital.” These are not just statements. They are disruptions. The man standing in front of you does not...

By: MIYINGO Ivan, MPhil, B.Pharm, MPS 📖 CHAPTER TWO: THE TIME BEFORE THEY COME There is a period of time you never see. It does not happen inside the pharmacy. It does not happen under fluorescent lights or between shelves of labeled medicine. It happens before. Before the questions. Before the prescriptions. Before the quiet negotiations across the counter. And yet, that unseen time determines everything. No one wakes up and immediately comes to the pharmacy. Not at the beginning. At the beginning, people wait. It starts small. A discomfort that is easy to ignore. A headache that feels ordinary. A cough that sounds familiar. Something that does not yet justify concern. So they continue. They go to work. They cook. They laugh. They sleep. They tell themselves: “It will pass.” That sentence is one of the most powerful forms of hope. And one of the most dangerous. Because sometimes, it does pass. And that memory—those past moments when pain disappeared on its own—b...

By: MIYINGO Ivan, MPhil, B.Pharm, MPS 📖 CHAPTER ONE: WHAT WE SEE BEHIND THE COUNTER The first thing you learn behind the counter is this: People don’t tell the truth. Not because they are bad people. Not because they enjoy deception. But because illness does something to a person—it rearranges their honesty, bends it, sometimes breaks it completely. By the time they reach you, they are no longer just patients. They are stories already in motion. And most of those stories are unfinished. The pharmacy opens before the city fully wakes. There is a quiet moment—brief, fragile—before the doors swing and the day begins. Shelves stand in perfect order. Labels face forward. Blister packs shine under fluorescent light. Everything looks controlled, predictable, scientific. But that illusion never lasts. Because outside, life is not organized into dosages. Outside, people are already negotiating with pain. The first patient that morning does not look sick. He walks in steadily. No ...

BY: MIYINGO Ivan, MPhil, B.Pharm, MPS YOU'RE DEAD IN THE YEAR 2089,  Your ancestors survived centuries of floods, slavery, and world wars, thinking of which whoever named it World War One (I) knew there was going to be a second.  They survived the Holocaust, where six million jews were exterminated in gas chambers by Adolf Balikuddembe Hitler.  They survived plagues and pandemics, and in the year 2099, you will be an ancestor who survived the COVID-19 pandemic.  For you to sit on the toilet and scroll through people’s fake lives on Instagram and Snapchat whilst comparing yourself to people you have never met is not only an insult to your ancestors, but a disturbance to the peace of the walking dead as well.  You don’t need more, you need less of what doesn’t really matter. Freedom starts when you stop needing to be liked.  As long as your thoughts and decisions are constantly filtered through by what they will say or think, then you’re in prison, and you ne...