How NOT to fill a Prescription

or
A fitting end to The Week From HELL


Fri, 1 Jul 2005 23:04:06 -0700 (PDT)
Lee Thompson-Herbert



Friday morning, about 5am I crawled out to take drugs. One of the smoke detectors starts beeping. The "battery dead" warning. George, who is never very sentient when first woken, yells, "Where is it?" Since I'm in the kitchen all I can tell him is, "I dunno. Not in here."

So we both wander around the house trying to figure out which smoke detector is going bad. I finally go back into our bedroom just as the smoke detector blares again (I told you George wasn't sentient when first woken). "Uh George, it's this one." Okay, so I'm not patient with stupidity when I'm first woken.

Find a battery. Find a step stool because even George isn't quite tall enough to easily open the stupid detector just standing in bare feet. Watch George slice his finger open on the detector case getting it open. Change the battery. Go back to bed. As I'm crawling back into bed, I have this ominous feeling that the other detectors had their batteries changed about the same time this one did...

15 minutes later...



BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP



The hunt begins again. Finally locate it in the back bedroom. Go through the whole dance again, only it gets more fun.
*thunk*
"What was that?"
"I think part of the latch broke off."
"Oh good."
Ram the detector back together, go back to bed again.

10 minutes later...



BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP



Well, now it's a process of elimination, as there's only one frigging detector left, the one in my office. And we don't have another battery, so we settle for yanking the damn thing down off the ceiling and pulling the battery. Silence reigns. Even the cats don't dare make noise at this point. George and I by mutual agreement turn off the alarm clock. Screw getting up.

I'll preface the next section by saying that the staff at Kaiser Hayward at least came up with a reasonable solution. Unlike the Kaiser Oakland staff who have screwed me over in a similar situation...

I call my doctor to get a refill on my painkiller medication. It's a CII narcotic, which means I have to physically go pick up the paper prescription which is written on a special form, then take it to the pharmacy. Every blank in the form must be filled out correctly, or the prescription can't be filled, on pain of the DEA coming down on the poor pharmacist with a bunch of jack-booted thugs. So my doctor has gotten reasonable since I started breaking bones. No more having to grovel, no more song and dance about how I might get addicted. Problem is, he's *still* an airhead. In the past, he's forgotten to _sign_ the damn form. So I always check. This time, I missed that he didn't put the date on the form next to his signature. This is a really *big* problem.

So the pharmacist in Hayward catches it. On Friday evening, on a holiday weekend. There's no way he can legally fill this prescription. I. Am. So. Screwed. Better yet, I don't have 5 days worth of pills. And I sure can't just *stop* taking the painkiller, even if my dose isn't that high. Even if the temporary effects of stopping weren't that bad, I'm taking this stuff for a *reason*. No way I'm going to spend the weekend in agony because my doctor has screwed up again. Except that that's exactly's what's happened in the past, because no covering doctor was willing to write a new prescription. So. Screwed.

The pharmacist suggests I wheel myself over to the ER and explain things to them. They may be able to help. This is the Hayward hospital ER, where they don't appear to see drug addicts under every rock, so they might actually *be* helpful. And it's not the Knife and Gun Club, so it only took a couple hours to be seen. After talking it through, the doctor at the ER decides to write me a partial prescription (about a week's worth) and have me call my doctor's office on Tuesday. And has the hospital inpatient pharmacy fill it, since it's now after hours. So three hours after noticing the initial mistake, I was out of there. Not great, but at least it was a sane solution.

The phone conversation on Tuesday morning is going to be a FUN one...
Time for a bludgeoning with the Clue-by-Four again.


--Lee
(Make it stop now? Please? Or is it just time for more BEER?)
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