I witnessed a miracle today

We have a gentleman, I use this term very loosely mind you, whom is banned from virtually every other pharmacy in the city. We know this because we were the first to pass him off roughly a year and a half ago. Someone decided though that they would contact the state and have him restricted.... to my store. Whoopdy-fuckin-do.

He's one of those people who calls every five minutes. I mean literally every fucking five minutes. I counted today, he called nine times in a period of 40 minutes. A couple times I didn't even have time to walk across the pharmacy to get to the other phone before he would call again. His drug of choice?

Tramadol.

We finally get the ok on his candy, cause he's not using it for medicated purposes, and I tell him that. He says he'll have a buddy come and pick it up for him in three minutes. Of course all the lil colorful warning lights are going off my head. With an idea, I bring up his profile and see he has not signed a HIPAA form.

Gladly I tell him that until he signs this form no one else will be eligible to pick up his prescriptions (i.e. we waive our rights of responsibility). He goes he just had 3 vertebra crushed in an accident and is stuck in a wheelchair. I could smell the bullshit through the phone. I proceeded to tell him that I would gladly bring the form out to his car to have him sign. He mutters something and hangs up.

82 seconds later (yes, I counted) he walks in the door. Praise Jesus, Allah, the flying-spaghetti-monster or whatever you believe in, as this was a miracle. He went in the space of less then a minute and a half from being wheelchair ridden to being able to walk. You don't even see this shit on televangelists shows.

I think I was close to God today... or maybe it was just the tramadol in the air...

I work with a genius

I may have mentioned that we have a nursing service pharmacy. They can do anywhere about 1000-1500 scripts a day. Theres usually 5 pharmacists working with a RN and about 10-15 techs. Needless to say it's an extremely busy and hectic place.

It is also vastly outdated. There is no flow in the place whatsoever and its become one giant bottleneck. They announced several weeks ago that they were going to redo the layout of the building (literally gut the entire thing) and add some much needed offices and all that jazz. Was a brilliant idea. This was announced roughly 2 weeks ago. They are starting demolition on Wednesday.

Yes they are starting to tear down this immensely busy pharmacy before the plans have even been finalized. Now I know I didn't eat paint chips when I was younger, or sniff glue for that matter, so perhaps I do not fully understand this logic. But if you have a pharmacy which averaged scripts in the four figures, do you really want to start gutting it without the plans finalized?

Needless to say whenever my manager comes in to whatever store I'm at, I grab a bag of popcorn and sit down to hear what hilarious story she has for us today. Thank God I don't work there. Just gives me something to giggle about on a daily basis. Man I'm evil

The End of Relaxation

A new semester is upon me this coming Tuesday. Gone is the relaxation that was winter break... wait was it really relaxing? Would I rather deal with a drunk/stoned individual yelling at me for not being able to use his Food Stamp card to pay for his pain meds or would I rather spend a night in the library studying physics and chemistry and accounting (I'm technically a business major/chem minor). Honestly its a push.

I survived last semesters Biochemistry hell. Eeked out a B- in it which I will gladly take. Brought my GPA for the semester down to a 3.4, but shit after what I went through I'll take it.

Another semester means the beginning of another blessed event.... drinking! Since I'm the only one who stays here during break it gets rather dull, but I'm already tasting the two dollar pitchers tuesday night. Mmmmmmmm

Mystery Drug

I was counting the minutes until 6pm (the time unto which I am released from the clutches of Hell) when a woman came to the pharmacy counter. She was a polite woman, which I took kindly to. A prescription was handed to me, I told her the usual spiel, and walked to my terminal. Then I looked at the script and saw:

Diltiazem 0.3%/Lidocane Gel
As Directed, 60gm

Ok... I'm going in my head. Diltiazem is a calcium channel blocker used mainly in hypertension. It is usually in tablet or capsule form (very pretty capsules I might add). So why the hell is this saying its a cream.

Quick google search... well sure enough it is a cream but is usually used in some sort of hospital setting. Used for 'anal fissures'... got a slight giggle out of that. I stroll on over to our wholesaler computer and type the name in the search field.... and get nada. I search under various brand names for Diltiazem and still nothing.

Finally I decided to call the wholesaler, 15 minutes on hold and they don't know what the hell it is. I call our nursing service pharmacy (where our most experienced pharmacists are) and I stump all four of them. None of them have heard of it before, nor have any idea where to get it.

I called the doctors office, but I called 1 minute after they closed so naturally I was greeted with a recording. I was stumped. The pharmacist was stumped. The robot was stumped.

After digging on the net and a couple of books for another 15 minutes we explained to the woman the situation and asked if she would be willing to come back tomorrow. She was quite cordial and told us to take our time and that she'd call us tomorrow evening. Nice lady.

So when I get into work tomorrow I shall call the only compounding pharmacy in our little city. Been a while since I've had something thats actually eluded my googling prowlness. Perhaps I need to the batsuit to solve this mystery...

How I know I'm an adult...

Barely 2 years ago when I went to a party or some other gathering to kill my precious brain cells I would usually stick to hard alcohol (namely Captain Morgan as the Captain is my bestest friend). Never would start out with beer or would even consider really drinking it.

Today I came to a realization. I came home and I wanted a beer. Not to become drunk or anything, but I was thirsty and I decided that of all the things in my fridge that a beer would taste the best. How in the hell did I get to this stage? Whats next, gray hair?

Fallout

I had a meeting with my manager Friday afternoon and went over the situation. Obviously she and I both agree that we are kind of fucked in what to do. See our company operates in two different states. We have a bunch of pharmacies in one state, and only one in the other. He works in the that other state. And we only have one other person that has a license in that state currently.

What it comes down to is, they confront him and he will be gone. Either he'll quit, or they'll fire him. Then that store is left without a pharmacist. Now this is our busiest store and we would be forced to close it. So, as my manager said, we are now stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I guess she is going to go over their records on Monday and speak to the owner about how to deal with this. I just know that I do not want to be around when the shit hits the fan because it is going to be traced back to me.

At least I can look back and say I did the right thing. I hope.