Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Drug seeking

I am blogging from bed tonight, because I am exhausted. Today I: walked the dog 2 miles and did an hour of spinning in the morning plus an hour of Zumba in the afternoon. In between I tried to get eyedrops for Annabelle. You wouldn't think that would be so hard, would you?

It all started off innocently enough at the eye doc's at Wal-Mart this afternoon. Annabelle was there to get a re-check on an earlier eye infection and to get her contact lens prescription. Unfortunately, the eye infection was back, so the doc prescribed an even stronger medicine than he did last time. We dropped the prescription at the Wal-Mart pharmacy at 1:00, picked up a few items, and were back at the pharmacy by 1:15. At 1:35, the technician called me up to the counter to inform me that as it turns out, Wal-Mart was out of that particular drug. She was very apologetic and said that she could order it for delivery tomorrow. I said no thanks, that I would just take it to the pharmacy on post.

We had to hurry home because Annabelle had scheduled a phone call with her online health teacher for 2:00. As soon as that was over, I grabbed her ID and the prescription and went to the pharmacy. It looked like it was going to be at least a 2-hour wait there before I could pick it up, which wouldn't work for us, as the kids had to be in E'town for rehearsal at 4:00. So I left post and drove down to Walgreens.

The technician at Walgreens said it would be about a 15-minute wait. I told her that I was playing race-the-clock and needed to run home for my kids to get them to E'town at 4:00. I would come back through the drive-thru on our way to rehearsal. I dashed home, tossed on my Zumba clothes, grabbed the kids, and headed back out.

When we got back to Walgreens it wasn't quite ready so we waited, drove around the building once (to let other customers get to the window), and waited some more. Just as I was getting ready to run the kids on down to rehearsal and then come back for the prescription, the tech announced that it was ready. She asked me to confirm my address and then passed the paper bag out to me.

As I drove off, I tossed the bag back to Annabelle so that she could get her first dose. "Remember," I said, "the doc says you have to shake this medicine really good first." From the backseat I heard rattle-rattle-rattle. What the HECK?

She passed me a bottle of pills that were not--obviously--her eyedrops. Instead they were another patient's ibuprofen. By this point, we were almost late for rehearsal, so I called Walgreens and left a message to tell them that I would be returning this other prescription and hurried on down to the PAC. I dropped the kids off and drove BACK to Walgreens.

Once again, the tech was so nice and apologetic that it was impossible to be mad. They wound up giving me the prescription for free instead of the $3 I would have paid (or the $167.99 somebody without insurance would have paid), and I made it back to E'town with time to spare before my Zumba class.

The funny thing is, after all that hassle I have decided not to give her the eyedrops yet and to get her seen by an ophthalmologist tomorrow just to double check that we are on the right track.

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