This Week's Snapshots, Pharmacy Style

1. Flu Paranoia?--- Naaahhh.....

I'm standing in line at the bank and it's pretty busy. A woman is sitting off to the side in one of the chairs waiting for someone, and starts coughing loudly. The place goes quiet and EVERYONE standing in line turns to look at her. She smiles, laughs, and announces "Don't worry, it's just smoker's cough!" Well, thank goodness.

2. Things that make me go WHAT THE.....????

A woman calls the pharmacy to check on whether one of her meds is safe in pregnancy.

Not because she is pregnant, but just in case. She tells me, "ya know, I don't use birth control but I AM sexually active. " Well, that's what we like to hear.

3. Just plain aggravating...

A guy who's out of refills on his glyburide and who hasn't filled it since JULY is annoyed because we won't 'spot' him a few tablets. I mean, if you haven't been too concerned about your blood sugar for the past 3 months, what's the big emergency all of a sudden?

4. When in doubt, dispense a placebo....

A woman calls and says the new generic brand of acyclovir we gave her does NOT work.

She says she wants the other ones, and implies we have given her some sort of bogus fake acyclovir. I don't even try to argue because there are some battles you're just not going to win. We give her the last few tablets we have of the old brand and wish her happy shopping to find any more. I wish I knew of a better way to deal with this type of thing.

5. Laugh to keep from crying.....

Working with a very slow and kind of unpleasant technician this week who's been given every chance to get up to speed. Waiting for her to crank out a simple Vicodin script that the other techs would have done in about 30 seconds. The other (dryly humorous) pharmacist I'm working with mutters, "What the hell is she doing, harvesting the opium poppies or something?"