Darvocet And Dulcolax Are Interchangeable For The Right Patient.

I can't claim credit for that headline. it came from an alert reader who tipped me off to this story from the website of WSB-TV:

JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — Investigators are looking for a burglar who has hit a Johns Creek pharmacy twice in the past three months. 

Back in July someone broke into the business and got away with Adderall, Oxycodone and thousands of other pills. The store's surveillance cameras captured that crime... 

Now police believe the same man may be responsible for both crimes. 

"From the footage of the video from both of the incidents, we're pretty sure it's the same individual," 

But this time around the pharmacist outsmarted the burglar. According to a police report, the pill bottles taken were filled with candy and laxatives.

Reached in a fictional headquarters less opulent than the new building his organization can't stop bragging about, American Pharmacists Association President Marialice S. Bennett praised the "outside the box" thinking "in improving medication use and advancing patient care"

"This pharmacist obviously realized that a person ingesting a large quantity of narcotics, as this burglar or his customers were evidently doing,  is at risk of severe constipation, and took measures to address the needs of his community, extending the same quality of care provided to the law abiding to those on the other side of the law. I'd like to think of this event as the culmination of a lot of effort and hard work here at APhA, as we have been advocating various medication therapy management schemes while standing idly by as pharmacists get ripped off in business transactions for almost two decades now. Bravo Health Mart Pharmacy of John's Creek Geogia, bravo!"

Pharmaceutical Benefits Manager MedcoHealth Solutions Inc., acting on the possibility that the alleged burglar was one of its cardholders, immediately imposed a $10,000 fine against the pharmacy for not having a hard copy prescription for the candy and laxatives on file.

Why Do People Call Them Teabaggers? For No Other Reason Than To Insult Them With A Sexual Innuendo, Obviously.

From today's New York Times:

It's hard to ridicule people who do such a good job of it themselves.....

I Think This Might Be The Closest I Can Get To Being In Love Without Crossing The Gay Line.

I Suppose It Would Be Rather Horrifying To Look At Your Baby And Discover An Ass Problem.

I wouldn't know, as I don't have any. Babies that is. We'll leave any ass problems I may or may not have out of this for now.

But like I was saying, I've heard  the love between a parent and infant is unlike any bond in the human experience, which totally makes sense. Evolution would have to create a pretty damn strong bond after all to withstand the noisy, smelly, mess making, mess getting into, sleep depriving experience that is parenthood. I've worked in a retail setting for close to 25 years now, which means I now see  babies who could be the babies of the first little shits I saw wailing down the toy aisle long ago, and I am convinced. To put up with one of those things you would have to love them. A lot.

I bet the people at Stiefel Laboratories understand that as well. That a few of them are even parents, and that on occasion, they have experienced the unique horror that must come from seeing the child you love so much with its ass on fire. I'm talking about diaper rash, and I'm not trying to minimize the condition. I'm sure it's awful for a little guy or girl to have to go through. I'm also sure that the first reaction of most parents would be something along the lines of "I NEED TO DO SOMETHING!!!!!" That the sight of such suffering, along with a tinge of guilt that would come from thinking maybe they had had something to do with this, "Did I change the diapers enough? Was I not diligent enough with the baby powder?" Would spur a parent to do anything in their power to make things right again.

That's how most parents would think that is. The parents who work at Stiefel Laboratories evidently thought something along the lines of "We could make some money off of this. A literal shitload of money" Which would explain the creation of Vusion ointment. A product I am nominating this night as the biggest rip off piece of shit ever to grace a pharmacy shelf.

It's not that Vusion is ineffective. It never would have been approved unless there was evidence that it worked. The product's package insert lists three ingredients; miconazole, zinc oxide, and white petrolatum.

Miconazole is an anti-fungal agent used to treat secondary yeast infections that can take hold during an episode of diaper rash. It's good stuff to use in these situations, and Vusion contains it in a concentration of 0.25%

Thing is, you can buy an over the counter tube of miconazole , eight times as strong, in the athlete's foot aisle. It goes by the name of Micatin.

Zinc Oxide is a skin protectant that also helps to seal out moisture. Again, a great idea to use when skin is irritated and wet. You'll get it in a concentration of 15% in Vusion. Or you could get some over the counter Desitin and get it in a concentration of 40%.

The audacity to list white petrolatum as an active ingredient is my favorite. White Petrolatum is Vaseline.

So, let's recap. Vusion is a prescription product that contains a combination of ingredients in weaker strengths than you can find them over the counter. Now let's do some math:

One tube Micatin, 14grams-  $6.49 (all prices from drugstore.com)

One tube Desitin, 120 grams, $4.42

Vaseline, 75 grams $3.29

Which gives us a grand total of $14.20.

So, how much do you suppose a prescription of Vusion goes for, after you go through the process of being examined by a licensed prescriber and given the right to buy something not as strong? Guess. Seriously...before you read any farther, I want you to take a stab at how much you think the good folks at Stiefel laboratories will charge you for watered down over the counter products.

Ready?

$265.99 for a 50 gram tube. I am not making that up. It's almost enough to make me slightly sympathetic towards insurance companies.

So by all means, the next time you gasp in horror when you realize your little one's ass is in an awful way, ask your doctor if Vusion is right for you, and if your doctor says yes......

Find another doctor.

I Make A Vow To You This Night. As Surely As I See This Glass Of Absinthe Before Me, I Will Dedicate The Rest Of My Life To Work Worthy Of The Nobel Peace Prize.

An open letter to the people of South Africa,

Comrades,

It may seem odd that I, a common citizen of the United States who has set foot outside of my country only four times, would make an appeal to you, a nation halfway around the world and seemingly far more politically complex than anything I have ever witnessed. I ask only that you hear me out however, as my humble plea to you may just end up benefiting us all.

For you see, the demon seed of apartheid, planted so long ago and so far away from me, has sprouted into a flower of fire that threatens to burn out of control. Consuming my own house the way it has burned through so much of your country. I understand your problem with the white Afrikaners in a way that no one else who is not black can. They came uninvited, assumed all positions of power and went on to rule with an iron fist, tolerating no questions, much less actual opposition. First in South Africa, then with my employer. Because when you freed yourself , you chased many of your oppressors directly into the corporate suites above me, subjecting me to the very woes you once endured. By liberating yourselves,  you set up my own enslavement. I suppose it is only karmic. I was a Republican during the time Reagan was propping up the regime that held you down. I am truly, deeply, sorry.

Did they do weird shit with the trash when they were in charge of your country? The trash system they have set up in my company is truly bizarre. Did they dismiss your ideas out of hand only to implement them months later and give you no credit? Did they tell you you did not know how to do simple arithmetic when you pointed out you did 75% of a store's prescriptions?  I can only imagine what it would be like to live in a land where those people were the only ones with guns. Look into my face my African brothers, and you will see the pain of a modern Nelson Mandela.

Which is why I am writing to you this night. Because like my brother Madiba, I choose not to fight the power of  injustice with force, but with the power of peace. From this moment on, I will not rest until you have settled your differences with the Boers and they can go the fuck back to where they came fr........I mean....they can return to their homeland secure in the knowledge you no longer want revenge for the fact they used to beat your head in and make you go to the shittiest beaches. I am in a unique position here my friends, as I both know what it is like to live under their heel and am pretty sure they will never call me a kaffir. Let us sit at the table of reconciliation and let me help you work together in the common interests of humanity.

As long as that table is in your country, and not mine. Before they conscript me to do off-site flu shot clinics, please, let's see if you guys can work this out.

We Have Finally Reached A Bipartisan Consensus In Washington. Now All We Need Is A Time Machine.

So the words of yesterday's right wing whack job can get someone branded a flaming socialist today. I can only shudder at the thought of what tomorrow will bring:

A Question About A Question.

My world could not be more unlike that of the Norteños or the Sureños and their ilk. I don't have to worry that picking out what color clothes to wear in the morning might be a life or death decision. I do have to be concerned that if my peers find out I eat non-organic bananas for lunch I will lose status in my community. I think about drive-thrus far more than drive-bys, and I'm pretty sure I'll never have to shank or be shanked. I do live close enough to the gangster world, at lease physically, that news of it often appears in my local paper. The accounts usually start off sounding something like this:

 "Blue dude saw a red dude and asked him a gang related question....."

I'm not making this up, they oftentimes refer to this "gang related question"

What could it be? This question. Do they mean there's like a quiz? Really? And I thought I was under a lot of pressure what I took the pharmacy boards. At least no one was sitting there waiting to bust a cap in my ass.....

OK, seriously. What the hell is this question the gangsters ask each other. This is bugging the shit out of me.

Attention Pharmacy Students: Take A Good Look Before You Decide To Enter Retail.

It Was A Shit Sucking Day At Work Yesterday. Oddly Enough, This Made Me Feel Much Better.

It's good to know we're not in this alone, yes?


From lastrefills.com

 

Sonny Rollins And The Candy Lady

There was a time in this country when Spam was mainstream. When middle class housewives across the country popped open a can and readied it for their husbands and children and the spam made them all feel like the very epitome of modernity. Before locally grown organic bought from the farmers market vine ripened tomatoes became our status symbol, we ate Campbell's tomato soup from the can, and pitied the poor slobs who had to make soup themselves. Before we had green tea organic natural nourishing shampoo we had Prell."You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola," Andy Warhol once said, "and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking."

Except Liz Taylor wouldn't be drinking Coke today. Anyone with even a little bit of status ambition would be drinking Fiji water, at the least.

I thought about this as I wandered down the main street of the quaint little Victorian-style town a little off the beaten path and into the candy store of the sad little old lady. She wasn't sad mind you, but seeing her behind the register would break your heart a little. Most of the town had been redone to create a tourist-friendly version of the past; "authentic" saloons, old style hotels that looked like they were ready for you to ride up on your horse and ask for a place to spend the night, restaurants that made you feel all 1875 while serving you up fair trade certified sweetbreads, it was a past in which we all can pretend we'd like to spend a little time, much like a Renaissance Fair.

The sad little old lady's candy store though, represented a past that actually was. Spartan, while tiled, and spare. Serving up Snickers, Three Musketeers, Jawbreakers, and Bazooka gum. A perfectly acceptable inventory for 1975, barely tolerable for a 7-11 today. The little old lady tried to talk you up as you looked over the Mars bars, but she was slightly out of touch in that unique way that the elderly become. She wouldn't be running her candy store much longer. She found her comfort zone sometime around the year I was born and never left it. I doubt though, if the sad little old lady has any regrets.

Earlier that weekend I saw Sonny Rollins headline one of the country's premier jazz festivals. For those of you who don't know, Sonny is the last echo of that golden jazz era that gave us the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, which makes him of almost the same age as the candy store lady. He's lost a step or two physically, his voice is a little frail, but he still commands the stage in a way in which he won't for much longer. He sent his tunes around the arena that night like a boomerang, the notes coming back to their source so he could hurl them back around until they made us all dizzy with delight. He played like a man on fire, a man who knew he wouldn't be doing this many more times, a man who didn't want to let it go. He played and played for a good half hour longer than would have been considered giving the audience their money's worth.

I wondered, as I sat there,  if the intensity of the performance might be because of the time he spent in prison when he was young and an artists creativity is at its peak flow, the months or years it took him to break his heron habit. The frequent years-long stretches he took away from music when he was of strong body. If, looking forward and not seeing many years there, he regretted what he did with some of those in his rear-view mirror.

I doubt Sonny Rollins ever found his comfort zone. I doubt he ever will.

I've thought about Sonny and the Candy Lady ever since, and I'm not sure which way is the best way to be old; comfortable and irrelevant, or on fire and searching, until the last moment.