I tried to keep a straight face

A lady picks up Amoxil Suspension for her son’s ear infection. She came back complaining that his ear infection was worse even though she had poured exactly 1 teaspoonful 3 times a day into his ear. This was an Alaska Native woman who, as it turned out, couldn't read English very well. This was the same woman who asked us if her husband could take her birth control pills, because they were making her sick to her stomach.

I feel like a slacker.

I just finished a week's vacation where I didn't do ANYTHING useful, really. I don't feel too bad about it - it's my first real vacation in at least a year. I went to Boston on someone else's dime, and got to be That Patient - I called my doctor's office after a couple of nights there, requesting just 3 or 4 Ambien for my trip. The doctor was out for the day, no big deal.

I show up at the requested pharmacy the next day expecting a prescription. Nothing.

It shows up 2 days after my request, so now I feel like a dick for hounding these guys. And I look like a shady fellow on top of everything - some weird out of town dude getting 30 Ambien.

It turns out it was so late in my vacation, that by the time I got it, I only had two nights left - one of which was spent eating and drinking so much that I didn't need it, and the second involved me not taking one because I was already slated for less than 5 hours of sleep due to an early morning flight home.

Now I've got a bottleful of Ambien, my vacation is over, and I'm terribly sad. It's back to the grind tomorrow! :/

--Fries With That

Tastycare: Health Care For The New Millennium Part 2

*Any person that writes a book, blog, or advertisement that tells people to skip chemotherapy and/or radiation treatment for cancer and use a homeopathic or herbal "cure" instead shall immediately be put to death.

What this does is purges society of soulless scheisters who would use fear and false hope to drain the funds of patients in the midst of an emotional meltdown over a serious but in most cases treatable disease. Yes, chemotherapy and radiation make you feel like sh*t but they are proven treatments for a disease that can make the human body its metastatic playground. This also helps a forced "natural selection" where we are weeding out some of the evil, greed, and sh*twores in the human population. This also decreases the number of people that will need medical coverage because this would reduce the scheister population by the thousands.

*No patient should be denied health care for any reason except that they are not paying their monthly premium. You don't pay the fee, you don't get the service.

*Premiums should be determined by disease state. Expensive diseases like HIV/AIDS, diabetes, coronary artery disease, etc. would mandate a higher premium than someone who just has chronic allergies. The logic in this is that diseases which are expensive to treat will have to bring in higher copays in order to cover the services and medications so the system does not go bankrupt like our current medicare and medicaid systems are. In the case of congenital disease it may not seem fair but life in general is not fair so suck it up and be happy you have health care.

*Any practitioner whose practice uses fraudulent billing to any insurance will incur a $50,000 fine and lose their medical and business licenses PERMANENTLY. Now there would have to be an investigation because sometimes practitioners don't actually oversee the specifics of the billing and a vengeful or greedy employee could try to frame them. That would be for a judge and jury to decide.

What this does is discourages fraud which is an extensive amount of overspending on health care. Several home health businesses in Miami are under investigation for fraudulent home diabetes service billing. They had the highest billing rates that were way out of proportion for the number of actual diabetics who would qualify for home care in the Miami area. Shameful...

Why is this a problem?

A prescription from 2006, from another pharmacy in another state, from a prescriber no longer seen...and she wonders why I can't fax her current doctor over the prescription for a refill....and by the way they've never ever seen her for this particular problem. Hmmm. Where to start?

What Sears My Patty

You know what really sears my patty? When I get "Rick rolled" by the insurance company hold muzak while waiting to find out why the emergency room prescriptions for a patient's kidney stones that were supposed to be approved by them an hour ago still will not adjudicate.

WTF? I finally get an agent, he asks me the patient name then says "I will resubmit them." and hangs up on me. Meanwhile the patient is standing next to me on his cell suffering through the same "Rick roll" and in major pain when an agent (probably the same rude douche that hung up on me) tells him it will take 30 minutes before the pharmacy will be able to reprocess the claims.

He chose to wait for the insurance coverage rather than pay cash and get reimbursed. So I get the patient's cell number and ask him how late is too late to call because I am going to reprocess the sh*t out of these claims until they work. I tried every 20 minutes for 3 hours then tried calling the insurance people again. Son of a b*tch!! They went home for the night and didn't fix this poor guy-that-is-in-so-much-pain-he-can-barely-stand-up's claim.

So I turn it over to our secondary insurance people with a note to call insurance as soon as they open so this guy doesn't end up back in the ER. At 7:45am one of the rxs adjudicates. Hallef*ckinglujah!

I celebrated a little too soon. The other rx rejects for 5 day supply covered. I resubmit for 5 day supply and I get "prescriber not covered." So I have our secondary insurance people call them again so I can get this guy 5 days of meds. The guy shows up and gets the one that was finally covered and was on his way to work. He decided to have the store near work fill the other rx when insurance approved it on his lunch break so he could pick it up over there.

He is calling to let his insurance provider know how sh*tty their service is. For a human being to endure so much for a service he pays for monthly, well that really sears my patty!

Taste The Rainbow

Last week some kids were sent home from middle school because they were "sick." They had in fact each eaten a box of "Skittles" and chugged a bottle of Delsym as a chaser.

"Skittles" (aka DXM, CCC, Triple C, Robo, Poor Man's PCP) is a stupid new trend in children wanting to get f*cked up. It is basically high doses of dextromethorphan (cough suppressant) taken to get a feeling of euphoria along with visual and auditory hallucinations. Now you know why we can't sell it to kids under 18 because they have a terminal case of the stupids and will try ANYTHING they see on the interweb to get high.

PATHETIC! You know what you get along with the sensation you wanted? You get headache, nausea, dizziness, drowsiness, stomach cramping, diarrhea, and in extreme toxicity you can end up in a coma or get a nice bit of brain trauma, kidney, or liver damage.

I feel that somehow these kids parents are failures. I feel that these kids will always be failures. I know this because these kids stole four boxes of Coricidin and four bottles of Delsym from a retail pharmacy outlet near their school. The path to being a "crack head" starts younger and younger.

What happened to the good old days when drug experimentation started with alcohol and marijuana in high school? What happened to the days when you experimented with things like LSD and ecstasy in college? What happened to the days where you entered adulthood and the real world with minimal chemical vices, working in a real job to support yourself and your family, and cutting loose every once in a while to relive the "good old days?"

The point I am making is that I love the original Skittles from M & M Mars. The only high I get from them is the high blood sugar that fuels my sprints between the drive thru and the fill counter. How dare some little douche bag kids besmirch the name of my beloved Skittles with something so stupid!

HOW RUDE!

The Darwin/Murphy Effect

The following funny sort of parrallels what happened at my store last week: a young woman walks in with a written Rx for Demerol 100mg/ml-3xday.

Hmmmmmm. OK.

I asked her if this is going to be cash or insurance (with my tech dialing the Dr's office). Out of the blue, the "prescribing physician" walks up to the counter with some sundry items, completely unaware of the scene unfolding in front of him in line. He overhears his name and waves to the tech on the phone, which draws the attention of the customer, who turns around and sees the Doctor who's pad she had stolen, and promptly emptied her bladder all over herself, as well as my clean floor.

Of course it was good for a laugh a while later.




A young man walks into a drugstore to buy condoms. The pharmacist says the condoms come in packs of 3, 9 or 12 and asks which the young man wants.

"Well," the customer replies, "I've been seeing this girl for a while, and she's really hot. I want the condoms because I think tonight's 'the night'. We're having dinner with her parents, and then we're going out. I've got a feeling I'm gonna get lucky after that. Once she's had me, she'll want me all the time, so you'd better give me the 12 pack." The young man makes his purchase and leaves, excited.

Later that evening, he sits down to dinner with his girlfriend and her parents. He asks if he might give the blessing, and they agree. He begins the prayer and continues praying for several minutes. The girl leans over and says, "You never told me that you were such a religious person."

He leans over to her and whispers, "You never told me that your father is a pharmacist."