Well, sorry I didn’t really notice this for a while but I guess it’s about time to step in and say my bit.
Frankly, I don’t retract any of the accusations I made. From the situation you were presenting, I gave you my personal experience from several years in the pharmacy. The behavior you were describing is typical of a person who has a history of seeking controlled medications at many pharmacies. I’m sorry if you felt slighted by the way the staff treated you, you weren’t at my store or I would have told you point blank that your medication was too soon. Again, I don’t have all the relevant information except what you choose to share with us, and from my experience on the other side of the counter I’m willing to bet there’s a whole lot more there. Like I said, in your previous thread you declared that you “receive a prescription for the same pain medication from the same pain management clinic every month” and I am willing to bet that the issue was not with your dental vicodin as much as it was with your previous month’s supply of Lortab. The math just doesn’t add up, even if you’d received it 3 weeks earlier, that would leave only 1 week left to finish out 28 days, which is normal. Two weeks to wait means you had just gotten the other script 2 weeks ago.
You seem to be misunderstanding the whole point of my posts, which is exactly what happened in the other thread too. Which seems to be what nyctea scandiaca is doing also, with all her expertise in the, what, looking up pharmacy laws business? Got me trumped there, sweetheart. I’ll just take your word that you know what responsibilities the pharmacy has, better than say, people who actually work there. You think I won’t give ANYBODY pain meds, that I take one look at them and say “You obviously don’t need these, off with you.”
This isn’t even remotely the case.
I’ll walk you through a daily interaction with a narcotic junkie, just so you can follow along:
Guy walks up to the counter. Hands me a prescription for Percocet, the directions say “Take one tablet up to three times daily as needed, quantity #90”. Using the simple math skills I’m sure we all have, we can calculate this to be a supply that will last our guy 30 days, if he is taking the maximum he has been prescribed by the doctor. I look at his profile, and I see that he’s had this same medication, same strength, same quantity, same directions, filled only 18 days prior. Quick math boys and girls…this leaves him with 12 days of medication that he should still have. I say, “I’m sorry, your medication is too soon to be filled, you should have about 12 days left, so if you’d like to return in 9 days, I’ll be happy to fill it for you.”
Scenario 1) He says, “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re right, I didn’t realize that I had that much left, the doctor usually just writes me a new script every time I go in. Nine days you say? What is that, next Thursday? Sure, I’ll bring it back then. See ya.”
This is a guy who is not likely to be abusing his Percocet. I don’t have a single problem with these people, they are in legitimate need of the medications they are getting.
Scenario 2) He says, “Yeah, well I’ll just pay cash for them then.” When I explain to him that we must abide by tougher restrictions for dispensing controlled substances, he then says, “Oh, well see what had happened was I maybe forgot that I had taken my pills already one day, and took too many, but then I had left them open on the kitchen counter and they accidentally got knocked over by the cat into the sink, so I only saved about 5 of them, so I took them all that day and now I’m completely out.” Uh-huh.
Look people, I am not the reason you’re having difficulty getting your precious hydrocodone early. These medications fall into schedule 3 for a reason: HIGHER PROBABILITY TO BE ABUSED. Look it up. I’m not just making this up. I’m not the reason you are having such a hard time getting your meds. It’s the junkies who never take a break from trying to work the system, and in the end it’s the legitimate patients who suffer for it.
You think that the pharmacy should just “shut up and do their job and fill the damn prescription”? If this was the case, and the pharmacy was just an extention of the doctor’s prescribing power, they’d be in the same building. There’s a reason we double check these things, often doctor’s don’t have the time or energy to be researching which of their patients just got the same prescription written 2 weeks ago, lucky for them we have that information at our fingertips. I’ve never EVER had a doctor berate me for informing them one of their patients was too early.
Not once. They always thank us for looking out and keeping THEIR licenses safe. Besides that, pharmacists have to go through their own grueling process of school and have to pass their own state boards to get a license. They’re not just going to fill anything that comes their way that they feel is unsuitable.
These junkies aren’t usually writing scripts themselves, they’re getting them from legitimate doctors, so before you jump down my throat about having the audacity to contradict a doctor’s orders let me give you the number to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department’s task force on prescription medication crackdowns. I’m sure they’d be delighted to hear that you think they should let go all the doctors they’ve arrested for writing narcotic scripts to patients they’ve never seen. Physician’s medical discretion, indeed. Give me a fucking break.
Maybe I don’t have any reason to believe that he is an addict. Maybe he is really just prone to bad luck. But I’ll be damned if I’ve never heard about someone opening their bottle of blood pressure medication right over the toilet, but you’d better believe the Oxycontin fell in there.
I have nothing against chronic pain sufferers. I resent the fact that you have a desire for me to suffer from chronic pain because maybe then, I’ll believe your sad story. As I have said repeatedly, and as will probably be ignored yet again, I have nothing against people who are on pain medication. I have a very big something against people who abuse it, openly, and then lie to me about it, and then try to use me as a tool to feed their addiction.
So don’t direct your ire at me for calling you out on a situation that I and many others have seen ad nauseum. Be upset at all the phony pain management clinics, the hospital junkies, the doctor shoppers, the pharmacy shoppers that pull this scam so much nobody believes it anymore. I’m sorry you have shitty insurance coverage, but that’s not what the issue was here. They would have called the insurance company and found out exactly when and where and how many for what days supply you’d received three weeks ago.
That’s all for now.