More Late Night Anomalies

A girl came in to the pharmacy looking for a pregnancy test. She reeked of marijuana and had on a short top with second skin stretch pants on. She was glittery and looked like a "rave kid." She appeared to have a 12 week baby bump so I giggled to myself after she left cuz that pregnancy test is going to come up positive...and I feel sorry for the child...

I was moonlighting at another McDruggie's that has about the same staffing as my store but does about 300 more prescriptions per day than we do. Needless to say it was going to be a L-O-N-G night. I went in at 10PM and was still filling prescriptions that were supposed to be ready at 7PM. The drive-thru never stopped and hospice called to get 5 prescriptions on the fly. I asked them if I could have at least an hour before the courier showed up and they said no problem. So I threw that on top of the mountain of work I had to do and kept on plugging away.

This was a night that feels like "Groundhog Day" only there is nothing amusing about it. No matter what you do it seems like the mountain of labels never disappears. I took 3 minutes to inhale a Diet Mountain Dew and a small bag of chips because I really didn't have the time to spare for anything else and I forgot to pack my lunch.

Patients were grumpy and I had many many emergency room patients because in the poor neighborhood most people use the ER as a primary care physician. Ridiculous. Medicaid gives you doctor options. Use them instead of rolling your pathetic cow eyes at me when I have 12 other patients who left the ER ahead of you and came in to the pharmacy before you. First come first served, and yes you all came from the same ER. You probably all sat together and b*tched about the wait time cuz you use the ER instead of a primary care physician. Again Medicaid gives you plenty of doctor options. Use them!

On top of that is a magical thing called EBA which is an OTC cash credit that must be processed as a prescription so people bring in baskets and baskets, even shopping carts full of diapers, mouthwash, toothpaste, OTC meds, etc in the hopes that all of it will be covered. The problem with this wishful thinking is that we do not have a definitive list of what is covered because it keeps changing. One month a certain type of diaper may be covered then 2 months later Medicaid decides to cover a different one. This leads to many items not being covered so we have to process each item and see if it is covered, if we know what is covered instead or if a different package size is covered. Each item's processing time can take up more than 3 to 5 regular prescriptions to process so it really is the bottleneck in the prescription process. I spent 2 hours processing 2 shopping carts full and 3 shopping baskets full of stuff. Of course half of it was not covered so I had to attach a little list of what was not covered to the receipt of everything that was covered and then I got to spend an hour returning all the not covered crap back to the store shelves because I was sick of tripping over it in the pharmacy.

All this time I was under the impression that the purpose of the cash balance on EBT cards was to cover these expenses. Silly me thinking that people on welfare wouldn't want another handout for crapping out a baby of unknown daddy. Yes I am bitter and fed up. The system should cover one child only. If you didn't learn from that mistake then you shouldn't be allowed to suck the government teats dry. I would like my tax dollars spent on something worthwhile like public education...I am not bitter at all (sarcasm).

I had a lady come in who appeared in her late fifties, early sixites. She was mad that she paid cash for mirtazepine (antidepressant, mood stabilizer) and said the price was $25 cheaper at the grocer store and Wal-Mart. She wanted the number to corporate to complain because she took 2 pills and said it made her sick. I gave her the 1-800 number for complaints and the store manager looked up the corporate address so she could write them a letter.

She then purchased 3 boxes of baking soda and 4 packs of D batteries. I can tell you why the mirtazepine didn't work. First of all, medications like it need at least a week of continued therapy to reach full effect because they alter chemical concentrations in the brain. Second of all, her other purchases confirm my sneaky suspicion that she is hooked on methamphetamine which overloads the serotonin receptors in the brain and over years of meth use pretty much blows out the receptors so that no matter what you cannot experience emotions such as happiness, satiety, and fulfillment. LAY OFF THE METH SWEETIE CUZ YOUR PROFILE SAYS YOU ARE LOTS YOUNGER THAN YOU LOOK AND YOUR TEETH WILL BE THE NEXT THING TO GO...

Some people have no damn sense. This is why we need to spend more on education and less on bullsh*t.