Sad times

Big N Tasty experienced an unfortunate event over Easter. I hope and pray she will be OK. To all her fans-please send her supportive and healing thoughts.

Thank you,

Filet

Lap Apron

A mighty protrusion of skin fold outcrop
Hanging out below your muffin top.

Creating friction and moisture for a minutiae of beast
Such as bacteria, fungus, and the opportunistic yeast.

I'm not talking about something worn when serving a patron
I'm talking about the voluminous reach of a skin fold lap apron.

For many aged* it's from caloric expansion with tonicity lost
For others the result of surgery/dieting with rapid weight loss.

Whatever the cause of your lap apron may be
Hygiene is important, keep it dry you see.

If your lap apron becomes a prohibitive part of your anatomy
Find a good surgeon who can perform a panniculectomy.

With a lap apron surgically and maybe permanently gone
We can begin to rip off the 30 Rock "Muffin Top" song.



*pronounced age-ed for the purpose of flow

Very Important

The trio of blood pressure medications on the other side of this prescription were so very important for survival that the patient walked all over it.

Allergy Wars

Spring has sprung and with it comes wonderful blooming flowers, trees, and their allergenic pollens. Allegra has made the jump to OTC and the ads on TV are now showing the polite fight to obtain OTC med sales. The funniest is a handful of people sitting around talking about their allergies and one guy is going to take Allegra then another guy pipes up "You can't take that with orange juice." I crack up every time I see it. Of course it is an ad for rival Zyrtec. Hopefully Claritin will join the fight and politely shame both of them..... Non-drowsy Zyrtec? You put me in a coma so I think Claritin will politely kick your ass.

Another great thing is a vaccine for cat dander/hair allergies currently in study. Just think if we can finally get a vaccine for cat allergies then we could adapt that vaccine for dog dander/hair, bird feathers, etc. The reign of pet allergies could be coming to an end in the next 5 years or so. I'm stoked! No more will I be unable to breathe and have to blow my nose a million times after my cat decided my pillow was an awesome sleeping place. No more will people have to shun goose down pillows and bedding. People won't have an excuse not to adopt pets from shelters because we will no longer be allergic to them. No more ads on Craig's list that we need to rehome a dog/cat because the child is allergic. A brave new world of pet ownership will prevail!

The future will be awesome!

Changing My Name To Captain Obvious

Late one night a lady and her teenage daughter come to the pharmacy. They had been in the emergency room because the daughter had occult abdominal pain. I'm not talking demons here, in medical terms occult means of unknown origin. I could pinpoint the most likely problem and solution just based upon observation of the daughter in the waiting room. She was morbidly obese, playing a video game on her phone, eating potato chips, and drinking a Pepsi.

To my keen sense of observation I am going with bowel obstruction. Looked at the rx and sure enough it was a laxative and pain med combo. The most likely reason: low fiber diet and not enough exercise or water.

Late one night a lady comes in with an emergency room rx for Fiorinal with codeine for migraines. When she checks out I just shake my head and wonder how long she has suffered. She buys 3 Hostess honey buns, 2 bags of Cheetos Puffs, 4 packs of salted sunflower seeds, and 2 Mountain Dews. It doesn't take a genius to see that she eats minimally nutritional things chock full of preservatives, color/flavor additives, and salt. All of these things can contribute to migraines.

She also had no previous history of any other medications except for Fiorinal with codeine to try and prevent migraine episodes so I made some suggestions to make her life easier but she didn't care because Medicaid will give her as many ER visits and Fiorinal with codeine as her little heart desires instead of her actually going to a physician and trying something daily to cut back on her discomfort.

Ugh, some people never learn...

Flounce Like You MEAN It!

I mean, if you're gonna announce, "I'm never coming to this store again!" as grandly as if Queen Liz was standing in front of Pick Up, make it count!

(Once you slink in the next week and you kinda feel like the whole pharmacy staff is smirking at you, know that we are.)

I had someone tell me they were leaving because I talked 'like I was a pharmacist'. I'm not sure what that means, other than counseling a patient and I wouldn't do that, so as usual I just brushed it off. Today, when this patient stood in front of me, I didn't comment, but my smile must have radiated pure evil, because she didn't even blink when I told her 15 minutes wasn't possible for a waiter at that moment.

I also don't hesitate when people say "Oh, you're higher than WalMart? What about the 4 dollar list?" Without a breath, I hand them their scripts back, give 'em a "We ain't WalMart, keep it moving" and go about my day. When you come back later sheepishly, I won't gloat aloud. I'll keep it cool.

Also, "We don't work on commission" is our battle cry. Not saying you want to deliberately piss off people, but thinking that your script for Vicodin from that pill mill down the street is directly paying my salary is making me laugh. Hard.

Rush Job

Hate putting away totes of warehouse? Feel like it takes aaaaaaallllllllll day? I am going to let you in on my sure-fire method to efficiently put away those drugs/supplies!

***Tote of refrigerated items first*** This has nothing to do with how much or how little is in the tote, it has to do with drug stability.

***Miscellaneous small boxes of syringes, test strips, etc that come separate from the totes*** These are annoying, small, and the whole box of stuff goes in one spot on the shelf.

***Now the other totes***
1. Oversized items (bowel prep jugs, boxes of syringes, 500-1000 count bottles, pound jars of ointments, large liquid bottles, Spiriva, Advair, etc.)
2. Boxed items (anything in a box like eye drops, ointments, nasal sprays, inhalers, etc)
3. Any other liquids and recons.
4. square/rectangular/odd shaped stock bottles
5. round stock bottles

It helps to pull all the items of each step and group same drugs together then put them on the shelf before going to the next step. In a situation with two people have one person set them up while the other person puts them away and that massive mountain of drugs will be put away in not time flat!