• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

When did she go to medical school?

Status
Not open for further replies.

FauxLiz

Sponsor
I went to pick up my prescription today for my migraines. I get there and the clerk first tells me that there is a problem with my insurance she needs to get the pharmacist. She comes over and tells me that she can't fill my prescription because she needs to speak with my doctor. Then she goes on to tell me that I have been on this med for a really long time and she has been doing research on this medication and doesn't think I should be taking it for this long.

Seriously, I get that she is a pharmacist but she has no idea about my medical history, it is not a schedule 2 med and she is not my doctor. I am so sick and tired of people in this country (US) butting their noses in to my medical care because they get an ounce training. Do I get up her business about how she manages and schedules employees even though my advanced degree makes me a whole lot more qualified to run the business side of the pharmacy?
 
What medicine it is, is irrelevant. According to ADA since my daily migraine condition is a qualified disability and the prescription was a legally presented (called in by the doctor) and timely prescription she has violated the ADA. All because she in her spare time has what decided she gets to pick and chose what is a valid prescription? NO! She doesn't know my medical history, she has nothing to go on other than the fact that it is an uncommonly prescribed medications and she gets to hold my quality of life in her hands. It is crap like this why I have carefully cultivated a relationship with the pharmacist that normally fills my scripts but the doctors office took 72 hours to refill my meds not the normal 48 so he was/is off until next week.
 
My pharmacist did a free consult with me to go ever my (reasonably complex) medications just this week. I get migraines, but I also get psychomyogenic headaches. The knowledge about migraine management is advancing quite a lot, and I take an opioid painkiller for the tension headaches, so I was totally grateful for the input he had to offer.

He made a couple of suggestions and said that he could talk to my prescribing doctors (there’s a few!) about them, for me. I was pretty blown away by the service, because I try and keep across the advances in migraine management, and I’m always on the lookout for alternatives to opiods.

I’m not saying you should be grateful- I’m not saying that at all. Because in your case the guy may have just been nosy and completely out of line. But definitely I personally don’t write-off input from good pharmacists, because they can have some good ideas up theis sleeve sometimes, and if they’re doing their ongoing professional development (as they should be) they do sometimes know about new alternatives before the doctor gets round to reading up about it.

Just an alternative perspective. It is certainly very frustrating to not get meds that you’ve been prescribed, especially when everything else in life is super stressful, it’s not something you really need right now to have people interfering.
 
Last edited:
@Sideways if it had been couched as a consult I might have tolerated it but it wasn’t it was she has been reading up on this med and do I know there are others? I asked if she had read my history well NO, so you don’t see in there that I have taken at one time or another every medication (just started on the last possible med before the release this summer of the new rcpg class of drugs that are finishing stage 3 trials. I have headache not oh that’s annoying but oh well kind of headaches but miss work miss major family events wish I could dig and claw the offending area out of my scull to relieve the pressure heads with nausea and light and sound sensitivity. And I have those headaches 20-25 days a month on top of PTSD. These headaches are caused by a genetic birth defect that pushes a part of my brain into the spinal column preventing the flow of CSF and causing the pressure in my head to increase. I have had the surgery and it didn’t fix the problem so this is what I live with. So no she doe not know more about the right medication for me than my doctors or I because I spend my time researching any possible options.

@EveHarrington it wasn’t anything to do with insurance it was her telling me she needed to call the doctor and here from him that it was medically necessary- really like he would have proscribed it otherwise? So the headache I have today is manageable tomorrow it will be worse and by Monday if she finally calls the doctor then I may get my meds or she will have forced an unnecessary trip to an Er to get the meds she should have dispersed.

ETA: I am sorry this sounds so angry it has just been the worst month in a while things keep piling on and I was counting on having these meds over the weekend so I could at least function at my son’s activities and not have to bail again.
 
Hm. I am afraid to just suggest that it sounds like malpractice, but if you do end up in the ER...

I hope you don't. I'm sorry you're having to deal with this
 
I’m sorry - you didn’t need this on top of everything.

I’d like to think she was trying to do the right thing. But it sounds a lot more like she was drawing negative judgements about you based on your meds, without actually having anything like the information she would need to give any kind of helpful insight.

I don’t know if it’s possible where you are, and definitely you have other priorities right now. But if possible? Maybe vote with your feet and take your business elsewhere to a pharmacy that might treat you with the appropriate dignity.
 
Pharmacists are specialists in understanding how medications work and how they interact together in a way that doctors just aren’t. It’s incrsdibly dismissive to think of her as a pill counter or shop owner - it’s not unusual at all for the pharmacist to catch quite serious (ie potentially life threatening) clashes of drug that the doctor wasn’t aware of or for them to be aware of newer, more effective medications or new applications for old drugs that doctors aren’t aware of.

I’d take a pharmacists advice about medication over my doctor’s opinion every day of the week.

I doubt she found herself a bit bored and decided to read up on your medication for lack of something to do, or to give you a hard time. She’ll have had reason to look - possibly because of another patient - or will have heard about different alternatives and wanted to check them out for her own professional development. It’s her job to know all about drugs, it’s her specialist, expert area of training.

I am so sick and tired of people in this country (US) butting their noses in to my medical care because they get an ounce training.

So I’m guessing you have years of medical training and a deep understanding of drugs, how they work and interact, their long term effects etc?

It would be professionally neglectful of her to keep dispensing a drug that she knew to have issues without properly talking to your doctor about it - because she may know about issues with the long term use of the drug that your doctor doesn’t.

She may not know your history but she will know more about the drugs concerned because that is her job - it’s not the first time that questioning the prescription of a particular drug has saved lives. I get that it’s hideous for you, and the timing is terrible in terms of it being a weekend but she is being professionally responsible in asking the questions.
 
Last edited:
Pharmacists are specialists in understanding how medications work and how they interact together in a way that doctors just aren’t.
@Suzetig you are right she knows how drugs work together I do not but as for trusting a pharmacist more than my doctor? Not only NO but HELL NO! Because the medication in consideration is a pain medication and the US is in a "war on opiods" therefore it is in my and my doctor's best interest to make sure we are aware of
how they work and interact, their long term effects etc

So I’m guessing you have years of medical training and a deep understanding of drugs
NO I don't have years of "training" unless you consider the the countless medications, procedures and surgeries that I have endured for this condition to have taught me nothing in the last 30 years not withstanding my own research on each and every one of these. I am also really SICK and TIRED of the idea that "ITS JUST A HEADACHE' mentality. It is not just a headache that I can take a Tylenol and be fine if it was I wouldn't have subjected myself to all of that for years. But hey after all she knows that right cause she studied medications not neurology and say if I broke my back and needed pain meds no one would blink and eye but lets remember this is JUST A HEADACHE after all and I must just be a drug seeking addict.

Thank you, I appreciate the fact that you trust your pharmacist but please respect the fact that they are not gods and sure as hell shouldn't act like that now that the government has demonized doctors for prescribing medications.
 
this is JUST A HEADACHE after all and I must just be a drug seeking addict.
I totally hear your frustration! I had a tension headache that lamded me in hospital in January. My friend ended up calling an ambulance on day 3 because she couldn’t handle how much pain I was in. When I got to the hospital, a nurse came in with some paracetamol :banghead: It took a couple of hours of me practically fixed in a headstand becore they sent down a neurologist who took me seriously.

I confronted my pharmacist about it, and told him “There’s gotta be something more effective than the opiate I take?” I take an opiate for the pain, and valium, heatpacls and stretching to ease the muscle spasm (same deal as what happens with sciatic pain, only it’s in my head!). And I take all of that in fairly large doses, usually for at least 2-3 days, but sometimes for up to a week. The fallout on my gut? Is serious motivation to find an alternative.

But when I explained all this to the pharmacist, he conceded that there really wasn’t any alternative treatment, and threw in “I’m surprised you’re not on something stronger”. Well I’d ask for something stronger if it wasn’t a friggin opiate!!

Every now and then, when I explain my “headaches” to a medical professional? They understand. And usually that comes with them telling me that either they, or someone they know, also gets “headaches”.

The only suggestion that I can possibly offer (because I get it, and I don’t think this is the last time you’ll get the “it’s just a headache, you opiod junkie” attitude), is if you’re in a pharmacy and they ask? Don’t hold back with explaining exactly what your type of headache is, like you have here.

Pharmacists seem to respond much differently to me when I give them the full picture. I shouldn’t need to do that if I have a script that I just want filled. But it (usually) seems to satisfy them that I know what I’m asking for, and I know exactly why I need it, and that no, it’s not “just a headache”.

Hopefully the headache has eased up for you - although, I’m guessing that might be wishful thinking with all you’ve got going on right now.

ETA If you can? Try and avoid referring to your headache as a ‘migraine’, because although the word does convey the seriousness of the condition, opiates are no longer the recommended treatment for most migraine.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top