Saturday, January 28, 2012

And Into The Deep Pool I Go. The Rhythm Of A Weekend Off.


Pharmacies are busy places, chaotic more than your average patron will ever realize. There are phone lines and fax machines, in windows and out windows and the big window in the middle that is neither but the place where anyone and everyone can walk right up and grab you. Input terminals and places where labels are spat out, paperwork to be sorted, people to be served. Lots of people. You are given enough resources to handle things if they go absolutely perfectly, and things never....go absolutely perfectly. There are prescriptions not sent and prices higher than expected. Insurance information expired and why do you need my card anyway? Isn't it in the computer?

And now the people are unhappy. And you have to manage them. Every once in awhile there is even someone with a question about medicine.

You also have a mountain of potential drug interactions, dosage errors and handwriting judgments to make. All while making sure the masses move through the pill mill at a reasonable speed.

I'll admit it, sometimes it's exhilarating. It can make you feel very important to spend 12 hours with multiple people demanding your immediate attention. It's not unusual for someone to be looking to me to solve their mini-crisis from the moment I put the key into the gate until I shut it 12 hours later. And when that gate comes down, the final preparations for closing are made, and the last person inevitably comes running up at the last minute, you walk out the door, and into.......

Nothing. For the next three days you have no reason to exist. The quiet is disorienting. The nothing is disorienting.  It's like.....breaking the surface of a water world and sinking. Not even sure you are sinking, but surely being carried away...

The rest of the night you're exhausted. Spent and thinking of sleep. But the sleep doesn't come easy. The mind has been wound up and neurons are still desperately firing, but the brain is mush, thinking impaired. Music is a good salve and you find yourself in the dark with a glass of scotch listening to Miles Davis, "Kind of Blue," which is the very sound of 3 o'clock in the morning. Exactly when will never be remembered, but the last of the day gradually slips away.

Into Saturday. Finally. You owe no obligations to the world and today it will not be your master. Clocks are turned to the wall, coffee is made and the paper is read at your leisure. Projects are worked on, writing and the prerequisite procrastinating primary among them. There are no people. You have had enough of them tormenting you during the workweek and the only time you step outside is to pick up some takeout from the dive down the street. Your mind is sharp from the rest, and you stay up writing and reading and thinking deep into the night.

And wake up Sunday with regret. The world has been having fun for two days. People doing what they actually want to do, not what they are forced to do. You understand that the "want to do" part of their lives has nothing to do with yourself. You think about the ex-lovers who were in the arms of their current lovers the night before, watch the sun set over the ocean and wish for something different. Anything different. The bars are lonely and quiet, doing you a favor by being open even.

Monday the world packs up and gets back to business without you. The hustle and bustle of workaday life is all around. People are earning their keep and making the best of it while you silently catch up on laundry and other housework. Reports come in from the radio of what's happening out there and eventually you prepare yourself to be thrown back in. Because the job that tears you down, taunts you and humiliates you, kills you slowly as surely as the cigarettes you're desperate to inhale once more, is the only thing you feel. You return because when you walk in the door and it cuts you again, it's the only reminder you're still alive.

The only reminder you're alive.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Highlights From The Week's Pill Counting Action. New Year, New Drugmonkey.

I don't know if it's Zen or apathy, but a peaceful calm overcame me when the customer asked me if it was normal that his albuterol inhaler didn't work. A few weeks ago I would have felt the need to point out to the Einstein, that no, the plan generally is for albuterol inhalers to be manufactured in such a way that they are functional, and if his was not, then that would not be normal at all. As it was I simply reprinted a label while Einstein was going into great detail about how when he pressed down on the canister nothing came out, and by the time he was ready to take it out of the box and show me I simply handed him another without a word. He looked disappointed that I had cheated him out of some of his planned bitching time.

The next customer at the register complained that there was only one of a "buy one get one free" item on the shelf and instead of following my employer's incredibly bureaucratic rain check process, I just told Supertech to ring it up as half off.  Who am I kidding. It's definitely apathy, and the irony is it allows me to provide a superior customer experience.

Not at all like the good mother who came in to pay for her son's prescription. She definitely wasn't apathetic. Her 24 year old son by the way. An age when I had a pharmacy license and would never have thought to ask Mommy to help run my life. They stood there together, mother and man-child, as Supertech asked for the patient's date of birth. The date of birth has to be put in the register so it can check that you're selling the prescription to the right person. The man-child mumbled something that no one could hear. When Supertech asked him to repeat it Mother exploded.

"WHAT!!!!!!! IT'S FOR HER??? YOU LIED TO ME! HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU LIED TO ME???? PUT THAT BACK ON THE SHELF!!!!!

"But.........."

"SHE CAN DIE!!!!!!!! DO YOU HEAR ME???? SHE CAN DIE!!!!!!!"

There really aren't any size capital letters than can properly convey the volume of Mother's yelling. She left the store with man-child three steps behind. I wanted to see how heartless this woman was and went over to see the prescription. It was for Ambien. No biggie. I went back to being apathetic.

We have a pharmacist who comes in periodically who is a stickler about having instructions on prescription labels read exactly as the doctor wrote them. She worked the other day, as evidenced by this phone call I took:

"Is this the pharmacist?"

"Yes"

"I got my Viagra prescription filled the other day and it says to take as needed for ED. Who's Ed?"

I was hoping that maybe the man thought we had given him someone else's prescription and not that we were questioning his commitment to his partner or Ed's attractiveness. Being apathetic makes these situations easier because all you have to do is explain to the nice customer that ED stands for erectile dysfunction. I should have become more apathetic long ago.

A man asked me the best thing for the pulled muscle in his back and I said Aleve. I always go with Aleve for muscle pain because I know that it has actually been shown to work better for menstrual pain than other NSAID's, and since woman pain has to do with muscle cramping, you might as well go for it when other muscles are involved as well. I'm not sure if there's any evidence to back that up, but it's a plausible enough theory, and probably more clinical thought than you're gonna get from the average "doctor" of pharmacy working a retail assembly line.

"Cause I'm here working up on the roof and I kinda felt this twinge while I was going up the ladder"

"I'd try the Aleve"

"Yeah? Cause by the time I got up there I could feel this knot"

"I think the Aleve should do the job for you"

I decided to make a game out of how many ways I could suggest he try Aleve. After awhile I boiled it down to just one word.

"Aleve"

A final confirmation was still required.

"Yeah?"

That would have really bothered me at one time, but apathy is freedom.

Later on I came up with an idea that might just be a game changer for retail pharmacy. What if insurance companies started gathering the information required to file a claim, and printing it on some sort of card, like a driver's license, that a person could carry around with them and have ready to show when they needed health care services? Imagine it, I mean who would want to just spout off whatever bits and pieces of random information that pops into their head or write a few numbers on a postage size piece of paper to carry around if they had this "card" option? Customers would overwhelmingly make the choice to make their life easier if only they had a way.......

BWWWWWWAAAAAAAAHHHHAAAAHHHAAAHHHAAAHHAAAAA!!!!!!!!

OK, I'm going back to being apathetic now. Because thinking about stuff like that is a sure ticket back to depression.

Goodnight.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

The Republicans Finally Prove Me Wrong.

SACRAMENTO- In a stunning indictment of California tax policy, experts admitted today that the state stands to collect hundreds of millions of dollars from the widely anticipated initial public stock offering of internet giant Facebook, illustrating the link between the state's higher than average tax rates and the effect on the behavior of the innovative, technology driven companies that are the key to sustaining the middle class.

"It's just common sense that high tax rates will drive out the entrepreneurial leaders who are the foundation of a modern economy" said California Republican Sate Senate leader Bob Huff  while speaking from the Capitol of a state where Apple Computer, Adobe, Hewlett Packard , Sun Microsystems, and Amgen have somehow managed to eek out a living. If you have some Enbrel in your pharmacy refrigerator, you're storing the results of innovation in a state where millionaires pay a 1 percent income surtax to fund mental health programs.

Experts fear a repeat of the 2006 Google IPO, in which 16 Google executives paid the state almost $380 million dollars, enough at the time to fund the salaries of more than 3,000 state workers, who did such things as guard the state's violent prisoners, teach its children, and man the pharmacy board that many panty-waisted ninny pharmacists in the state expect will act as a counter balance to the giant national corporations that have already largely destroyed the profession. Those 16 executives are now largely destitute. Four of them starved to death in the winter of 2010.

Estimates are that Facebook's IPO could be four times as large as Google's, which means California could conceivably see over a billion dollars in tax revenue, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg's emaciated, lifeless body will be found on a San Francisco street corner in about a year after he becomes penniless.

"We simply cannot afford fall behind low tax states such as Alabama, Oklahoma, and Alaska when it comes to competing for the companies that will innovate the way to the economy of tomorrow." Huff continued while tapping on his iPhone. "The free market system has clearly shown what happens when you try to tax the people creating the jobs that are the key to growth."

You are reading this very post on blogger.com, a part of Google, which like I said, generated $380 million dollars for California and none for Alabama with its IPO.

Asked about the fact that California sends 22% more in taxes to the federal government than it receives, effectively subsidizing the rest of the country with the products of its economy, Huff plugged a set of earbuds into his iPod and pretended not to hear the question.


Wednesday, January 11, 2012

I Hope There Will Be Oompa Loompas Involved. The Oompa Loompas Were My Favorite Part.

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA- In a move many industry watchers are calling "completely outside the box" Global pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced today a nationwide promotion to honor the 41st anniversary of the release of the classic film "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory."

"We all remember Willy from our childhood, and no doubt have wondered what it would be like to win a magical golden ticket that would allow us to enter a place of pure imagination." said Norvartis CEO Joseph Jimenez. "Well today Novartis is happy to announce our very own golden ticket. Starting immediately, select packages of Excedrin, Bufferin, NoDoz and Gas-X may contain a way to a world of absolute drug-induced euphoria! That's right, we may have substituted the most popular narcotic in the country, oxycodone, for any of these products! How's that for powerful headache relief!!

"Of course, it would be ironic if you found one in a bottle of NoDoz, but we're betting you won't mind."

Mr. Jimenez went on to say that in addition to the wildly popular oxycodone, the promotion also features the classic narcotic morphine. Second place prizes include oxymorphone and hydrocodone.

I'm not making this up about oxycodone showing up on your Gas-X. Seriously, check your Gas-X if you have some. 

When asked why Norvartis would choose to honor the 41st anniversary of the film instead of last year's 40th, Jimenez said "well it's also the 7th anniversary of the remake. There's no need to overthink this really. The important thing is to realize that with every purchase of one of these selected over the counter products, you could be opening up a dream world of bliss. And possibly constipation."

"This is bettern' a lottery ticket" said Pikeville, Kentucky resident Buford Radley while emptying the shelves of a local Rite Aid of all forms of Excedrin. "It's kinda like a scratcher the way it builds anticipation, but the prize is better, especially now that Skeeter raised the prices on his Oxy's and I'm going through withdraw."

Industry analysts expressed surprise that a major recall of over the counter medicines did not involve Johnson and Johnson Corp in any way.

"I read the press release and Tylenol, Benadryl and Children's Motrin don't seem to be mentioned at all." said Merryl Lynch's Andrew Sigmond. "Go figure. Now, if you'll excuse me, I feel a killer headache coming on. I'm betting that some Bufferin will really hit the spot."

Full disclosure- The Willy Wonka idea came to me via an alert reader. It takes a village.