So, my friend has had an unusual day and it has me rather uneasy. I’m kind of worried about her and want to get off work to go down and check on her, but I’m pinned here for another hour at least.
My life is in a tizzy due to mom’s health having her in the hospital. But I get a call from her, apparently she went to the pharmacy to pick up her prescription and someone had come this morning and picked it up. Not her. They used a credit card which wasn’t hers. The pharmacists apparently thought she was going nuts because someone picked up her prescription, just not her.
On top of that, she got home today and someone had gone into her room and laid a poster out. She doesn’t know how it got there. She owns it but it was put away when she left this morning.
Her apartment also apparently smells like cigarettes, when none of her roommates smokes.
I can make a dozen logical conclusions concerning the events, but the series of them is unusual and just makes me nervous.
I’m doing some research as to identity theft as that is a likely explanation for the first part. We’ll see what comes of it.
I don’t know what the best approach would be, but she might consider filing a police report, just to get some official documentation started if there are further events. Taken together, all of those add up to something creepy.
Jeeeez. I’d be a little scared for her safety. Either someone’s in her home or she’s having some sort of a memory lapse. Either way, can she stay with you until you find out what’s going on?
Also, does the pharmacy have a camera on the counter area? You might want to get a look at the tape. Pretty damn creepy.
Don’t people have to sign for prescriptions in your state? They do here, so the pharmacy should have the signature of the person who picked it up. May not be legible, and perhaps they won’t let her see it (although since it was her prescription, that would be weird), but they also have the credit card info on file, including the name on the card. She has called the police, right? If anything, it seems like the pharmacy might be a little more interested in their security, if unidentified people are picking up prescription drugs.
The most likely event, of course, is that someone came to pick up meds for Smith, Robert A. and the pharmacy gave them the bag for Smith, Roberta. In which case, it’s pretty damn important to get it straightened out, as Robert might be taking the wrong medication!
Are you sure she’s not doing drugs? I don’t mean this as a joke, but either there’s some weirdo following her around or perhaps she’s not in total control of herself.
Well the pharmacy part is easy to sort out. In fact, the pharmacist should already have reported the matter to the police since somebody has fraudulantly taken prescription medication not intended for them. And since they used a credit card it should be easy to find out who.
I get messages from our local pharmacy all the time telling me Name’s prescription is ready at XYZ Pharmacy. Trouble is, it’s not me, it’s someone who used to have our phone number. If I wanted I could probably go down and pick up her prescriptions unless it was one of the few that require I.D. Tell your friend to make sure the pharmacy has all her info correct.
(The message I get is always a recording. I have tried to straighten it out by calling the pharmacy but apparently they can’t be bothered with updating their records - one pharmacist argued with my husband for a while when he said we didn’t know who this woman was and we couldn’t pass on the message to her! It seems that once they gave her the wrong prescription or dosage and now they couldn’t get ahold of her to tell her not to take the medication! If nothing else, this has caused me to never use this pharmacy!)
IANAD, but the cigarette smoke thing makes me wonder, could your friend be schizophrenic? Because smelling scents that aren’t there is one of the symptoms. According to schizophrenia.com/diag.php: “Hallucinations can take a number of different forms…Olfactory (smelling things that other people cannot smell … )”
The unrolled poster could just be absent-mindedness on her part and the pharmacy could have made a mistake and given the prescription to to the wrong patient. However, her stories about the poster and the prescription could also be signs of paranoid delusion, which is another symptom of schizophrenia.
How old is she? Schizophrenia often manifests in young adults in their twenties and early thirties.
What’s her medication? If it’s anything psych-ish in nature, a change in dosage might be causing her to sort of space out. Although what’s worrying about that is that the credit card used wasn’t hers – the unremembered poster and the smelling cigarette smoke could potentially be side effects of anti-depressants, antipsychotics or seizure meds, but unless she’s carrying a card that belongs to an SO or other close family member and accidentally used it, that doesn’t explain who has her prescription.
Has your friend by any chance lost her purse or wallet recently?
Just FYI, I’ve never had a pharmacy ask me to sign or show ID for any prescription. Not even when they were forking over a bottle chock full of Schedule II narcotics. On the other hand, my state is a few short steps away from demanding I bring a photo ID, my birth certificate, my social security card, my passport, and my own notary public before they will sell me any regular Sudafed, so who knows what it’s like where Improv Geek and friend are?
The “someone else picked up the prescription” could just be carelessness on the part of the pharmacy staff. I once picked up a refill of a med I take every day – it wasn’t till I opened the new bottle a day or two later and saw that the pills didn’t look right that I re-checked the label and realized it wasn’t my prescription. The person whose prescription it was didn’t have my last name, though she did have a last name that begins with the same letter as mine.
That was my guess. And did she ask her roommates if they had anyone over, especially smokers, and did anyone go in her room? Those two events sound much more likely than identity theft that also includes this mysterious someone hanging out in her room while she was gone.