PHARMACIST STEVE

I was a Pharmacy Technician for years and have a Pharmacist in the family. I regret that I held judgment in the past before I had to get controlled substances myself, maturing, and facing judgment from a nurse. When I was a Pharmacy Technician if anyone was paying cash for a controlled substance I was told to tell them that we were out of stock, if they had a home addresses more than ten miles from our store I was told to tell them the same thing. I thought I was doing what was right, but at the same time it is how I was trained. This one white guy came in once with a younger man of color and handed me a script from a dentist for Vicodin. I asked if he had his insurance card, and was told that he did not have insurance. The training given to me was that this was a huge red flag because people pay cash to avoid billing their insurance to get multiple scripts filled. I felt bad about the whole situation, but I went and talked to my boss who told me to tell him we were out of stock. Just then the older white guy opened his wallet and showed me his Ohio state Board of Pharmacy License verifying that he was a licensed Pharmacist, and said to me “you wanna check your shelf again”. My boss who was a licensed Pharmacist and said, “Oh we have it after all”. Yet 99% of the time we were instructed to turn down the uninsured. The reason being that the insurance company would send us back a response to soon, so if you were getting multiple scripts you could get away with it. This was before the Prescription Monitoring Programs. Also if you dressed in a Polo with Dockers and had no tattoos you were generally safe. I developed RSD after a tumor was removed from my left sciatic nerve, and called the nurse at the surgeon’s office to tell her that the Tylenol 3 I was taking every four hours was not working. She said, “whatever you must just be an addict trying to get more pain medication”. Meanwhile my left foot blew up like a balloon, turned beat red, and felt like someone was light my foot with a couple of large lighters, and shocking it with a tazer. I had my 40 cal out after I talked to the nurse. I was going to end my life to stop the pain. Decided to lock up my 40 cal in my lock box and give the keys to my mom. She said this doesn’t make sense since you never had any surgery on your foot. I laid in her room all night till the next morning when she called the doctors office and the surgeon said to come right in. I did and he said your brain thinks that your foot is injured because we had to take your sciatic nerve apart, and the nerve block must have wore out. He said I am paging the first available pain management specialist to see you asap. Also he was not happy about the Nazi Nurse. I do not know what happened with her. Now when you call the after hours number in your discharge instructions you would think that if you were taking medication as prescribed and having severe pain, or swelling that the nurse might want to rule out an infection, or that maybe something worse. In not so many more words she said other things reflecting her opinion that I was a junky. Recently I had Walgreens give me shit on a transfer of sleep medication. It was filled by my old Pharmacy on the sixth of one month, but picked it up on the seventh of that month supposedly. I moved closer to Walgreens, and transferred it there. I went to pick it up on the seventh and they said that my old Pharmacy said that my wife or I did not pick it up until several days later. I was like I do not think that is the case, but the said it is exactly 30 days from the date you last picked up your medication. This means if they do this it will make it so nobody will take extra tablets. And if you live in a rural area and have a 45 minute drive to the Pharmacy from your Family Farm you will just have to make those extra trips. For instance if you are out of blood pressure medication and need it the day before you will have to make to trips. CVS and Walgreens are the to biggest fighters of pick up date and fill date. All of them plus Rite Aid kept partially filling a friend’s scrfor Ultram because it was for 140 tablets a month. They kelp saying that they by law could not fill the whole thing at once, but could fill half of it then get the rest after 15 days. We’ll when he would go back for his partial they kept saying that insurance would not cover another month when he had a month. “SIMON SAYS”. Then they told him some shit about the DEA personally checking into him. He went back in their and showed him his stump where he lost his leg from an infection. Then started yelling that maybe he go up the street in their ghetto neighborhood and find a compassionate herion dealer to treat his pain. Having a fresh amputation just made them dumbfounded. They still just started to repeat their lines. I drove him to a small local chain, and they filled the who script that was a monthly script with no problem, or rhetoric

Filed under: General Problems