A Quick Question For Everyone Who Works In A Doctor's Office.

Why do you think you need a fax from me to renew someone's prescription? You really don't. You can issue a prescription at any time, in any way you like. You can write it down, you can phone it in, you can leave it on the voicemail. Hell, when I was in Ohio the law still said you could transmit it by telegraph.

Yet you'll sit by the fax machine, sometimes for hours, and wait like you need the fax machine's permission to do your job. Sometimes you'll even call me..... tell me what the patient asked you for, and instead of approving or denying the refill request, you'll say something like "WE HAVEN'T GOT A FAX YET!!"

Why do you think you need one? I mean, it's a renewal, and you have a record of what you've prescribed the patient in the past....don't you? I mean, when the doctor issues a prescription, you guys do write it down somewhere, right? All that medical type information necessary to provide proper care.....you do keep track of that.....I hope.....

If not, maybe you should start. Because I bet your office could save a lot of time if the doctor didn't have to re-examine and re-diagnose every patient every time they came in.

Or maybe you do have the information, and would just rather sit on your lazy ass stuffing snacks into your face and talking about the new weight loss fad instead of getting up and finding the chart.

I think you know which one I think it is.

I'm Tired Of Being Everyone's Soap Bitch.

I'm going to write something in this post that may at last lift the veil of semi-anonymity that has covered this blog for the last three years. It may also frighten any of you that shop at corpo-pharmacies:

When the soap is empty in the store's bathroom, I replace it.

There you go. If you work or have ever been in a drugstore, and there was soap in the bathroom, you now know exactly who I am. Because I SWEAR TO GOD I seem to be the only person on the planet capable of putting soap in the bathroom of a pharmacy. This now covers 16 years, three different pharmacy chains, and two states. Tonight however, I have seen the empty suds bottle one too many times. I'm calling a soap strike.

This time I put the soap next to the sink in the pharmacy. There's plenty for me. There's none in the bathroom. It'll be an interesting experiment to see how long it stays that way.

Just don't interrupt me when you see me come up from the back of the store and head to the pharmacy sink. That really wouldn't be in your best interest.

I Randomly Dive Into The Giant Pile Of Crap Mail That Never Gets Opened, And Come Out With A Stupidity Nugget

Many of you will look at this ad and undoubtedly be confused by the model pictured power walking her way to health.



You're confused because you can't read the fine print beside her leg:



"Hi, Bob? Great job on the Levemir layout. We just have one small problem. When we showed it to focus groups, about 20% of the people who saw it thought the purpose of the model was to explain the intricacies of quantum mechanics, and they didn't get the connection with a diabetes treatment."

"What?"

"Another 15% thought we were making fun of Oprah."

"Oh my God!! We're already over budget on this! And we sure as hell can't afford to get sued by Oprah! Jesus, what are we gonna do!!??"

"Calm down Bob, I think I've got a solution. If we add some microscopic print that should take care of everything. We simply must state the sole purpose of this model in a way most people will overlook."

"Do you think it will work Dirk?"

"It will have to work."

Bob walked out of the office frightened, but somehow reassured that the steady leadership of Dirk would once again get the department through another crisis.

At that moment Bob realized he was in love.

Understatement Of The Day.

I live for pharmacy my friends. I breathe it. 24/7 my mind is on the drugs. Like just now I was spending my spare time reading about anticholinergic side effects. There is no better way to spend a Saturday night, and probably no better illustration of why I am single.

My commitment to medicine is matched only by my appreciation for stupid proclamations. Which is why I found this statement from our friends at Merck to be so personally fulfilling:

Anticholinergic effects include confusion, blurred vision, constipation, dry mouth, light-headedness, difficulty starting and continuing to urinate, and loss of bladder control. Most of these effects are undesirable.

A twofer! Informative and idiotic at the same time! Exactly which of these effects is the desirable one you suppose? Maybe the confusion. In a world gone insane, anticholinergic-induced confusion may be the best way to cope.

The blurred vision may also help with this. I see no possible role for loss of bladder control though.

It's A Short Night So I Don't Have Much For You. Enjoy This Iggy Pop Video

In an interview with The New York Times last year Iggy said of this performance:

"I'm going to be straight, I was more than a little high"

The best bands usually are:






I love how the whole hedonistic spectacle of unparalleled rock and roll debauchery is narrated by the square in the suit. I can just see him after the show in the hotel bar, tie slightly loosened, a martini in hand bending the barkeeps ear:

"Jesus Christ you wouldn't believe the things I saw today Bob"

I also love the sidekick....."hello....I'm a doofusy looking young person here to interpret what's going on here for Mr. and Mrs. small town America, and to make it appear non-threatening so we don't get too many complaints. Think of me as your window into the world of todays youth."

The youth that would have no doubt eaten him alive had he actually been in the crowd.

I was born 20 years too late. Sigh. Goodnight.

In The Battle Against The Large Breasts Of Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives, Tonight The Drugmonkey Scores A Small But Significant Victory

From the mailbag:

I just wanted to thank you immensely for the post you did on Oct. 22, 2006, concerning idiotic doctors who give Pexeva prescriptions instead of paroxetine. My husband was diagnosed as bipolar about a year ago. We have been in terrible financial condition, in large part to his inability to work because of his mental issues. After years of discussion, I finally got him to see a doctor about it. He was diagnosed using the same damn checklist I found online years before and the doctor prescribed Pexeva. It was like a miracle -- he was under control for the first time in a long time. The only problem was that his prescription cost about $200 a month (he's uninsured), and it was very hard to scrape the money together to pay for it.

Imagine my surprise when googling around about a generic alternative, I found your post. THANK YOU SO MUCH! Our dumbass doctor didn't believe there was a generic Pexeva (amazing!!) so I printed your post and enlightened him. Incredibly, it took some arm-twisting to get the damn paroxetine prescription from him, but we got it. $4 freaking dollars a month at any Wal-Mart or Kroger's; hell of a difference from $200 a month. Honestly, we can now pay the electric bill thanks to you!!!

By the way, the headline of that old post the letter writer printed out and showed to her doctor?

If You Are A Doctor That's Ever Written A Prescription For Pexeva, You Are By Definition A Numbnut.

BBBWWWWAAAAHHHHAAAHHHAAAAHHHAAAA!!!!!! Oh God I wish I could have seen it......

If you guys keep doing things like this, you're gonna put my future in the chicken-fat removal business in serious jeopardy......

A Few Times A Year I'm Glad I Went To Pharmacy School. Most Of The Time Though, I'd Rather Be Scraping Chicken Fat Out Of Restaurant Exhaust Fans.

It's always deceptively warm when I decide to buy a coat. I swear the last three times I have purchased a jacket it's been during one of the 10% of days here when the chill off the ocean doesn't go straight into your spine. This means I spend most of my walks to and from lunch at work shivering like a madman.

A madman like the one at the counter trying to get a Z-Pak. I smelled him before I saw him. My intern saw him from the moment he came in the front door, and started snickering immediately. "I gotta get this one" he said. My intern is young and still full of that testosterone fueled kick down to establish your place in the pack desire that comes with adolescence. He came back with the new patient registration form and the prescription and a few more laughs.

"Ha ha....he tried to make up an address for himself.....he can't even write! Ha ha.....Jesus he smells....."

"Hillary, look at this prescription" I said. "It's for a Z-Pak and Vicodin. He told you he didn't want the Vicodin. What does that say to you?"

Hillary gave me a blank look. I went on. "The guy made a couple bad decisions in his life and now he's fucked. In 15 minutes he's gotta go back out there into the drizzle and gloom and deal with the consequences. No matter what he decides to do with his future he's not gonna have it easy, but I tell you what. For the next 15 minutes we're gonna give him a little bit of normalcy."

Hillary got quiet. It's a rare moment when I don't happily join in the mocking of customers, and he was probably a bit confused. We got his Z-Pak ready and I went out to ring him up.

He was sitting in the waiting room looking as bad as he smelled. Shivering in the warmth of the corpo-pharmacy under a coat that looked like a worn-out version of mine. I called out his name and he stumbled to the counter.

I told him how he was going to take two tablets at once for his first dose, then that he would take one tablet a day until they were gone. I told him not to worry if he didn't feel all the way better when he took his last dose, because the antibiotic would keep working for 5 more days. An affluent man who's the type of customer I spend most of my day with walked by and looked absolutely horrified that such a person would be allowed in a store where affluent people shopped. I smiled. And it wasn't a fake customer service smile.

I told the homeless dude there was a water fountain at the front of the store if he wanted to take his first dose right away, and that he'd be feeling better soon enough. Then I took too much of the homeless dude's money.

"Thanks man"

Most days I don't feel like I have much to give, but today I gave 15 minutes of normalcy to a guy who could use it. Not to mention a bit of a teachable moment to Hillary.

Better than scraping out chicken fat.

*Disclaimer: My intern's real name isn't Hillary. The last time I used Hillary as a fake name to help create a negative impression in voter's minds on the eve of a crucial primary, it worked so well I decided to do it again. You know what to do Indiana.

I'll Call Your Reverend Wright, And Raise You Another Crazy-Ass Preacher Getting Himself Involved In Presidential Politics.

Dear Republican Friends,

You don't want to fight this battle.

Especially once we contrast Obama's reaction to his preacher going off the deep end to what we have here:





If it comes down to which side has the craziest preachers, I am confident of victory.

A Message From My Gardener José

First I must say I have much honor and pride.

When Señor Drugmonkey put my name on his poll of blogs I thought he meant to mock me. To rub it in my face that I work with my hands to make his landscape and not my brain. I tried to kill him two times. But yesterday while I was spreading manure around his carport, he called me inside to say he had something to show me. I had never been inside Señor Drugmonkey's condominium before, and I will never go inside again. But he showed me on his computador that people think I can write prescriptions for medicine better than nurses, toothmen, and those that assist doctors. People who went to school far longer than me and who have received many honors and awards in their school. I never thought when I came to this country 5 years ago I would ever have earned this much respect. I thank you all.

Sadly, I have had an encounter with La Migra which means I will be leaving soon. But I want to say before I go that I will never forget the people of the United States and the lessons that I have learned here. I will miss many things about this country, but the honor you have given me will be with me always.

I will not miss Señor Drugmonkey. He is a bastard.

Let's Lighten The Mood A Bit With Some Highlights From Today's Pill Counting Action, Shall We?

We have Diet Mountain Dew in the store! We have Diet Mountain Dew......in the store!!!! Oh happy day! Dear reader, I cannot begin to explain to you what this means to me. When I switched from regular Mountain Dew to Diet Mountain Dew I instantly lost 5 pounds, that's how much of the stuff I go though my friends. The artificial attempt at citrusiness that is Diet Mountain Dew is probably more a part of my life than my cat Spooky, and now, at last, I can buy it at work. I am free forever from the tyranny of Diet Pepsi. There was no way this could be a bad day.

I was in such a good mood on day one of the Diet Mountain Dew work era that when a customer complained that we had only one bottle of the "buy one get one free" hydrogen peroxide on the shelf I offered to just sell her the one we had for half price. I'm not supposed to do this. Official corpo-policy says to issue the customer a raincheck, but I was crazy on the dew, and putting people before policy.

"But what am I getting free?" was my reward. I spent the next 5 minutes trying to explain how 1 full price + 1 free = 1 at half price. It never sank in. The customer stormed out of the store. I don't say this very often, but maybe there is a reason for that corporate policy.

I could have asked my District Manager about this when he made one of his biannual visits to the store, except that he spent the entirety of it on his cellphone. I could have been grinding up Vicodin and snorting the powder off the pharmacy counter and the DM wouldn't have known. He did look in the pharmacy refrigerator while he was talking and say quickly to my keystone tech that we couldn't be keeping our food in there.

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"TODAY IS THE....???????" Said the elderly woman making out her check. She had been making out the check a good 2 or 3 minutes already.

"30th" I said.

"THIRTEENTH?

"30th"

"THE TENTH?"

I gave up. Like the bank's gonna notice what date she puts on there anyway. Team ignorance scored another point.

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Right about that magical time of day when your legs are telling you for the first time that they'd rrrreeeeaaallllyyy like to sit down for just a bit I got a phone call.

"Drugmonkey?" came the voice on the other end. I instantly forgot about my legs. This voice was a dead ringer for an ex. An ex I had not parted ways with amicably. I had changed the locks on the front door when this relationship ended.

"How have you been? We haven't talked in awhile"

I began to accept the fact I was going to die soon.

"Ok....."

"Do you have any 75mg Effexor XR?" The tech at the corpro-pharmacy in the next town over who sounds exactly like my psycho ex-girlfriend said. You married people don't know what you're missing.

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"And how do you spell your last name ma'am?"

"G like in George......."

"G LIKE IN GIRL!!!" the woman's husband butted in.

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A woman bought 6 mechanical heel smoothers. Said she was giving them out as presents. I spent the rest of the day wondering what the occasion could possibly be and drinking Diet Mountain Dew. Out of the pharmacy refrigerator.

A good day indeed.