PHARMACIST STEVE

My ER visit (May 23, 2015) was horrible.

On that day, I had fallen in a restaurant. I slipped in an unseen, unmarked puddle of water and fell, HARD, on my back down the entire length of my spine. I instantly froze, partly in shock, partly because I was terrified I had done some damage to either of the fused regions of my spine (C4-C6 and L4-S1). I was checked out by paramedics and eventually allowed to get to my feet. Not being able to tell how I felt (from the shock of the fall), and I wasn’t hurting any more than usual at the moment, so we declined the ambulance ride and stayed to eat the lunch we had ordered.

Throughout the meal, my pain started developing and increasing, so we decided to go to the ER to have me checked out, particularly to have imaging done to see if any damage was done to or around the hardware in my fusions.

I was triaged and taken back for assessment. I was passed off to a physician’s assistant who eventually agreed that I needed a full-spine CT. Once this was decided, I requested something for the pain, which had continued to escalate and spread up and down my spine. The PA grudgingly agreed to ordering a Percocet. At this point, she started treating me like a drug seeker. As time went by and no medication arrived, I asked a passing nurse if I could just take an oxycodone from my purse. The nurse obtained permission and I followed through.

The PA asked me some strange questions. She asked me if I was afraid and whether or not I felt safe. I thought this was odd, even understanding that perhaps it was a question regarding abuse? Knowing that I came to the ER after a fall in a public restaurant full of people, who called 911, I thought it was strange. Then at one point she had me sit up so that she could check my leg reflexes with her little hammer. While tapping, she asked when my knee replacements had been done. Again, very odd, considering that I have no surgical scars on my legs whatsoever. (The answer was that no, I had never had knee replacements.)

The CT was a bit of a nightmare that added to my pain. Halfway through the full-spine scan, I was abandoned without explanation. I eventually had to call out for help. It turned out that a child had coded and all hands were needed there, and thankfully the tech shut off the machine before he left. However, the scan had to be completely done over, extending my time on a hard, narrow table, increasing my pain.

Thankfully, the CT images showed no damage done from the fall. By this point, my pain level was very high (8 out of 10), and I knew the limited amount of pain medication I had (1 pill per day, for a severe chronic condition called Adhesive Arachnoiditis) would not be enough to bring my body out of the pain flare caused by the trauma of the fall and exacerbated by the long, long time spent on the CT table. I talked to the PA about this and requested IM morphine (liquid morphine injected into the muscle) to bring the pain down to at least what it was when I entered the hospital. She exploded and said “We do NOT give out prescriptions for pain medication!!!” I quietly told her I did not ask her for one, only for the IM morphine to reduce the pain.

This is where she looked me in the eye and LIED to me, telling me that morphine could NOT be given IM. I looked at her in silence for about a minute, and then told her, “That’s interesting, because that’s exactly what I was given last November when I came in with a scorpion sting. In fact, it was here in this hospital, you can you check my records.” I had to insist she look at my chart. She left the area and I never saw her again, and I was eventually given the morphine IM by a nurse, but never received the single percocet tablet that was ordered (I’m guessing they cancelled it correctly).

This was my first experience being treated like a drug-seeker. My words were twisted, and I was lied to. Years ago I probably would have meekly shut up and suffered, but I am so tired of the mistreatment that chronic pain patients receive at the hands of their doctors, their pharmacists, hospital workers, and people in general. How do I go about preventing this mistreatment from happening again?

I also had a bad experience (just not directly) with a rookie pharmacist in 2013. My husband had gone to pick up a new prescription at XXX, because I wasn’t allowed to drive yet. My lumbar fusion was in June of 2013, and my surgeon was carefully titrating me off my oxycontin after the surgical pain had passed. It was a Friday, and I was having my follow-up with my surgeon’s PA rather than with my surgeon. We decided to reduce the oxycontin from 80mg 2x daily to 60mg 2x daily. For some reason (it was the only time this ever happened to me), she took my bottle of pills (I don’t even know why I had them with me; it could be she called and requested that I do so, but cannot truly recall this detail), leaving me 1 or 2 tablets in case it took extra time for the pharmacy to fill the new script.

The pharmacist refused to fill the script because it was “too early” for a refill, not acknowledging it was a NEW prescription of a lower-strength medication. My husband pointed this out to her, but she said it didn’t matter, it was too early. When requested to call the doctor’ office (it was after hours, but they have an answering service), she complied, but when the doctor on call was not the PA who wrote the script, but actually MY DOCTOR, under whose license the PA wrote the script. She REFUSED to talk to him and told my husband she would not fill the script.

When my husband asked if he could send her the bill if he had to take me to the ER for withdrawal complications, she said it didn’t matter, she wasn’t going to risk her license to do her job. That was that.

Fortunately, I had just enough oxycontin of lower strengths to cobble together (along with the 1 or 2 tablets left to me by the PA) to get me through Sunday night. I called my doctor first thing Monday and he got the pharmacist straightened out, so I was blessed to have continuity in my medication until I could get help from my doctor, without having to suffer withdrawal, humiliation, and further torture in the ER.

The pharmacist was completely out of order and negligent in her duty as a pharmacist. She refused to fill a completely legitimate prescription and refused to talk to the doctor who could verify it for me. She put my health at risk with her profiling behavior. One of my biggest regrets is not reporting her infraction right away. Unfortunately, this happens a lot with chronic pain patients; we are so exhausted from our daily battles, that the non-essential ones slip by without prompt action (especially when recovering from major spine surgery).

Filed under: General Problems