WEST CHESTER, Penna. – Yesterday the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that the popular erectile dysfunction drugs Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra should carry warnings on their labels advising users that the drugs may cause blindness. Unfortunately the warning came too late to save Gerald DeHaven from setting fire to his retirement apartment.
DeHaven, 72, started the fire in the Sunrise Acres retirement facility last night after he had tried to light a candle in his apartment but ignited the drapes instead. He told police he had taken Viagra about an hour before accidentally starting the blaze that destroyed the drapes and a futon in his apartment and forced the evacuation of the 525-member facility.
According to the FDA, DeHaven’s loss of vision was caused by non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION)—a blockage of blood to the optic nerve. Men at greatest risk for this condition are older than fifty, smoke, and have high blood pressure, heart disease, or high cholesterol.
DeHaven had been attempting to light a candle in his apartment in anticipation of a romantic evening with Margaret Prizer, 75, his next-door neighbor at Sunrise Acres. He told police that “everything kind of got fuzzy looking” just after he had lit his cigarette lighter. Unable to see clearly, he set fire to a vertical line in the pattern of the drape, thinking the line was the sexual-fantasy jasmine-scented candle he had purchased on a field trip to a boutique in West Chester the day before.
Prizer discovered the fire when she arrived at DeHaven’s apartment and let herself in with the key he had given her. To her astonishment the drape was ablaze, and DeHaven was urinating in the kitchen sink.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he called. “I’m in the bathroom. I’ll be right out.”
“I screamed, ‘Oh my god,'” Prizer told police, “but Gerald just laughed and said, ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet; wait until the Viagra kicks in.'”
The Viagra kicked in after Prizer had led DeHaven out to the parking lot of Sunrise Acres.
“Gerald was in this advanced state of arousal that his Jockey shorts could not conceal,” said Tammy Rondstadt, recreation therapist at Sunrise. “He attracted quite a lot of attention in the parking lot, let me tell you.”
According to Rondstadt, Viagra use is common at Sunrise Acres.
“We saw a marked decrease in attendance at evening bingo and afternoon sponge painting when Viagra became popular here about five years ago,” she said. “There’s nothing randier than a seventy-five-year-old man with a chubby that would make a twenty year old proud. A lot of the ladies complain about having to take up ‘social activities’ they had put aside years ago, but I think they secretly like it—they just wish Viagra wasn’t so long acting. They worry that one of these old geezers is going to die in the saddle.”
Despite the FDA’s recommendation that Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra carry warnings on their labels, Rondstadt said the fire in Gerald DeHaven’s apartment was the most serious example of that side effect she has seen at Sunrise Acres.
“We get the occasional old goat wandering into the lobby with a pup tent in his pajamas because he suddenly went blind on his way back to his room after a date—that kind of thing,” she said, “but nothing like this.”
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