Blogcutter's Adventures in Pharmacyland
Apr. 20th, 2020 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterSo today I finally braved the pharmacy. I'd run out of refills for most of my prescription drugs so I took in some new prescriptions. A total of five drugs: four prescribed by my rheumatologist and one by my family physician.
We got there soon after 8 AM. There was no wait to get into the store and only one person ahead of me at the pharmacy counter for drop-offs. So dropping it off went pretty smoothly. The pharmacist asked if I wanted to wait for them, come back later or have them delivered. I asked how long a wait it would be and he said "At least 30 minutes."
Well, that was OK with me. The rest of the store was not all that busy and I figured I could use the time to buy a few grocery and drugstorey items.
So off I went with my shopping basket. I bought more batteries (AAs and AAAs), a couple more tins of the chickpea soup we like, a jar of "just peanuts" peanut butter, a taco kit. As with the grocery store last week, there was absolutely NO flour to be had but I did manage to get a package of flaxseed which I figured would help stretch the flour we do still have. Towards the end of the half hour, I started shopping the more perishable items: some half-and-half, a package of mixed grated cheeses, a bag of frozen corn. Then I took all my items to the self-checkout with my Visa card and Optimum card. I still don't really like those self checkout stations but admittedly they have their uses during a pandemic. I hope we'll be able to go back to real-life cashiers and paying with real cash once the pandemic ends, though.
I went back to the pharmacy counter when the 30 minutes were up although not too surprisingly, my prescriptions weren't ready yet. They invited me to take a seat at one of the 2-metre apart chairs nearby. I had quite a pleasant chat with the man seated on the other chair. He told me about his spacious greenhouse/garden area, where he was growing tomatoes, peppers (of various kinds), squash (also a couple of different kinds), lettuce and spinach. We ended up waiting another 20 minutes or so until his name was called. Soon afterwards, it was my turn.
The rule for now is that they can only provide 30 days' worth of a medication at a time, regardless of what it says on the script, but you can still keep renewing every 30 days (or maybe it's 23 or 24 days) until you've gotten the full complement you've been prescribed. So that meant that with my osteoporosis drug, for example, I got a grand total of one (monthly) pill in a 3x5" bubble pack inside a cardboard box but I'm allowed 14 renewals (usually I get a 3-month supply with 4 renewals). Then with the methotrexate (8 pills taken together once a week), they had chopped up the little bubble-packs to give me exactly 32 pills. Apparently I'm allowed 11 renewals on that one. Seems like for all the education and training that pharmacists have, they must spend an awful lot of their day doing basic arithmetic!
Anyway, they did have all of the drugs in stock. And at least with renewals, I can do them online or over the phone so it will be less of a rigamarole.
Let's hope that by the time I need to get brand new prescriptions, the pandemic will be over!
We got there soon after 8 AM. There was no wait to get into the store and only one person ahead of me at the pharmacy counter for drop-offs. So dropping it off went pretty smoothly. The pharmacist asked if I wanted to wait for them, come back later or have them delivered. I asked how long a wait it would be and he said "At least 30 minutes."
Well, that was OK with me. The rest of the store was not all that busy and I figured I could use the time to buy a few grocery and drugstorey items.
So off I went with my shopping basket. I bought more batteries (AAs and AAAs), a couple more tins of the chickpea soup we like, a jar of "just peanuts" peanut butter, a taco kit. As with the grocery store last week, there was absolutely NO flour to be had but I did manage to get a package of flaxseed which I figured would help stretch the flour we do still have. Towards the end of the half hour, I started shopping the more perishable items: some half-and-half, a package of mixed grated cheeses, a bag of frozen corn. Then I took all my items to the self-checkout with my Visa card and Optimum card. I still don't really like those self checkout stations but admittedly they have their uses during a pandemic. I hope we'll be able to go back to real-life cashiers and paying with real cash once the pandemic ends, though.
I went back to the pharmacy counter when the 30 minutes were up although not too surprisingly, my prescriptions weren't ready yet. They invited me to take a seat at one of the 2-metre apart chairs nearby. I had quite a pleasant chat with the man seated on the other chair. He told me about his spacious greenhouse/garden area, where he was growing tomatoes, peppers (of various kinds), squash (also a couple of different kinds), lettuce and spinach. We ended up waiting another 20 minutes or so until his name was called. Soon afterwards, it was my turn.
The rule for now is that they can only provide 30 days' worth of a medication at a time, regardless of what it says on the script, but you can still keep renewing every 30 days (or maybe it's 23 or 24 days) until you've gotten the full complement you've been prescribed. So that meant that with my osteoporosis drug, for example, I got a grand total of one (monthly) pill in a 3x5" bubble pack inside a cardboard box but I'm allowed 14 renewals (usually I get a 3-month supply with 4 renewals). Then with the methotrexate (8 pills taken together once a week), they had chopped up the little bubble-packs to give me exactly 32 pills. Apparently I'm allowed 11 renewals on that one. Seems like for all the education and training that pharmacists have, they must spend an awful lot of their day doing basic arithmetic!
Anyway, they did have all of the drugs in stock. And at least with renewals, I can do them online or over the phone so it will be less of a rigamarole.
Let's hope that by the time I need to get brand new prescriptions, the pandemic will be over!
