30 Days of Thanks: Day 20, Our Awesome Pharmacist

Today I am oh-so-grateful for our wonderful pharmacist. When I took Emma to the ER on Tuesday and she was diagnosed with RSV, the ER doc told me to follow up with our primary care physician ASAP. I told him we still had some albuterol for breathing treatments, so he did not write me a prescription (I will not do that again!) for more since we would be seeing our regular doc soon. I called before we even left the parking lot and had an appointment scheduled for Wednesday at 2:30. The next morning, the doctor's office called and said we could not get in until Monday because our doctor was ill and would not be in. Not thinking about the prescription, I said no problem because I was pretty sure I could handle this, having dealt with RSV once before.

Then came Friday. I notice we were getting down to just a couple of packages of medicine (5 doses each), and Emma had been needing treatments more often. So I called the doctor's office and told them I needed another doctor in the office to write a prescription for us so we could make through until Monday. I was told no problem. Then at 4:00 the receptionist called me back to say all the doctors had been in a meeting and closed early for the day without anyone writing Emma a prescription. No one was on call and no one was left at the office. Sigh.

So I called the ER we went to on Tuesday. That doc was not on call then or at anytime this weekend. No one from our doctor's practice was on call all weekend. Her old pediatrician was not on call, nor was anyone from his office- all weekend. Don't get me wrong- the nurse I was talking to was GREAT. She tried everything she could to get me a prescription without having to bring Emma back, exposing her to more germs with an already weakened immune system or exposing more people to RSV (including checking the on-call schedule for the whole weekend for us for every doctor we had ever seen). But legally, there's only so much they can do because the ER doc we saw did not write anything in her chart about needing a prescription. (Here's where I began kicking myself for telling him we didn't need one.) I told her we would come in to the ER if we had to and hung up, thanking her for all her help.

As a last ditch effort, I call our pharmacy and explained what was going on to our pharmacist, who had already helped a lot by dosing out Mucinex and Triaminic for a 25 pound 2 year old (I honestly think we'd have ended up back at the hospital without that). He said, "No problem. I'm sure your doctor will ok a refill on Monday. Come on up and pick up some more medicine anytime before we close." What a life-saver! He saved me a 45 minute trip to the ER where we would have been had to wait who knows how long while exposing her to who knows what just for a prescription refill.

So long story, but I LOVE our pharmacist! That's the kind of treatment you don't get at big name stores, but he considered it no big deal. So Thanks Shane! You're the best!