Escape from Hospital
Lut was discharged yesterday!
I forgot to bring a snack or lunch to work yesterday. I can't remember the last time I forgot food. But I was only working until 2:30, so I figured I would get something when I left. I had a couple of mini Twix bars out of a co-worker's candy bowl.
Lut called at 1:45. "I'll be ready to go at 2:45!" So I left work at 2:30 and went straight to the hospital, arriving at Lut's room around 2:55. I packed up the stuff in his room and paged a nurse to get his remaining beverages out of their fridge (this hospital keeps their snack room locked up).
Nurse: "He has one medication to get from the pharmacy. I called them earlier and they said it's ready for pick up. Why don't you pick it up, call us when you've got it, and then we'll bring him down in the wheelchair* to the front entrance while you bring your car around?"
* Lut can walk, but he tires quickly and the hospital is ginormous.
So I shoulder several bags full of stuff and go down to the hospital pharmacy on the ground floor.
Pharmacy: "Lut? We don't have anything ready for Lut. We don't even have anything on order for him. We have some incomplete requests that they never finished?"
I called Trask and asked him to page the nurse, to see if this was something we could only get from the hospital pharmacy or if we could get it filled at our regular pharmacy. Then I walked back to the car, dumped off all Lut's stuff, and walked back up to his room.
Nurse: "Sure, we will give you a paper prescription! You can get it filled anywhere. Just waiting on the doctor to sign it!"
Me: "You can't call it in? Uh, okay."
After another wait, we finally leave the hospital at 3:55. We wade through the beginnings of rush hour traffic, and go to the Wal-Mart pharmacy two miles from our house.
Wal-Mart Pharmacist: "Oh, this is a compound. We don't do compounds here, sorry. Some of the Walgreens do. CVS on Noland Road, maybe?"
So I go to Walgreens on Noland Road, which is across the street from the CVS, figuring I'll ask CVS next.
Me: "Can you fill this?"
Walgreens: *takes script, takes all my insurance info*. "It'll be ready in an hour, hour and half."
I went home, made dinner, ate, talked a little to John when he messaged, and played a game of Small Worlds online with him. By now, it was 7PM and I hadn't yet heard from Walgreens, apart from an automated text asking me to acknowledge that I wanted texts, and then a second text confirming that I did. I called Walgreens. Their automated system had no record of my order. I waited on hold for several minutes to talk to a person. The person also had no record for my order. She went to talk to the pharmacy. I waited on hold for several more minutes.
Walgreens Pharmacy: "Oh, I thought I paged you before you left. We can't fill this. I just put it to one side."
Me: SCREAMING FOREVER.
Me: *drives to pharmacy, still screaming*
I waited several minutes at the useless Walgreens pharmacy to retrieve the piece of paper, and took it across the street to CVS.
CVS pharmacist: *makes many sympathetic noises as I complain vociferously about Walgreens* "We do compounds here, but we usually send them to our overnight pharmacist. I don't know if we have this drug in stock. I will look."
Me: "He's supposed to get this four times a day and the hospital had only given it to him twice when he left."
CVS pharmacist: *ransacks pharmacy looking for drug* "I'm afraid we don't have it. It's pretty obscure; a hospital pharmacy will probably have it but the other ones only would if someone else had recently placed order and they had some of the powder left over me."
Me: *thanks nice CVS pharmacist and tries not to cry*
Me: *calls hospital pharmacy to make sure they can produce this tonight*
Hospital Pharmacist: *checks* "Yup, we can."
Me: "You're open 24 hours?"
Hospital Pharmacist: "Oh, no, we close at 9PM."
Me: "Okay I can get there before nine."
So I spent another 30 minutes getting back to the hospital pharmacy, waited 20 minutes to get drugs, and finally went home so I could dose Lt. About 2 hours apart, because it was so late by the time I got home with drugs.
I guess the moral of this story is:
1) Eat lunch so you are not furious over every problem that arises
2) Never leave the hospital without all the medications you will need that day, whether or not it delays you.
Still. Six trips to four pharmacies over the course of six hours, to get one prescription filled. x_x
Scorecard:
Hospital Pharmacy: C for not having the prescription ready the first time (after telling the nurse it was ready! What the heck, pharmacy?), but at least made up for it by getting it ready the second time
Hospital nurse & doctor who signed prescription: C- Maybe it's not their job, but I feel like one of them should have known I was not gong to be able to get this prescription filled same-day anywhere else.
Wal-Mart Pharmacy: B. OK, he couldn't do it, but he knew that right away and attempted to redirect me to someone who could. And in fairness, if I hadn't needed it filled same-day, the CVS would have been fine
Walgreens: F-- NEVER GOING TO ANY WALGREENS EVER AGAIN STILL SO ANGRY
CVS Pharmacy: A+ pharmacist actually knew what she was talking about and gave useful advice.
All of this aside: Lut is home! \o/ ♥
This is a profound relief.
We are back to the 24/7 care routine, with daily visits to the clinic. On Monday, they will once again attempt to collect stem cells. This is scheduled for five days, which is interesting because previous attempts had all said "might take as much as three days". I am not sure if this is because it might actually take five days of collection, or if it's more "if your counts are not high enough to start collection on Monday, we tentatively plan to try again on Tuesday and maybe Wednesday, so here's some extra just-in-case appointments." We're at the clinic now and the doctor is supposed to see us this morning, so I'll ask him about it when I ask about his meds. This entry was originally posted at https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/625223.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I forgot to bring a snack or lunch to work yesterday. I can't remember the last time I forgot food. But I was only working until 2:30, so I figured I would get something when I left. I had a couple of mini Twix bars out of a co-worker's candy bowl.
Lut called at 1:45. "I'll be ready to go at 2:45!" So I left work at 2:30 and went straight to the hospital, arriving at Lut's room around 2:55. I packed up the stuff in his room and paged a nurse to get his remaining beverages out of their fridge (this hospital keeps their snack room locked up).
Nurse: "He has one medication to get from the pharmacy. I called them earlier and they said it's ready for pick up. Why don't you pick it up, call us when you've got it, and then we'll bring him down in the wheelchair* to the front entrance while you bring your car around?"
* Lut can walk, but he tires quickly and the hospital is ginormous.
So I shoulder several bags full of stuff and go down to the hospital pharmacy on the ground floor.
Pharmacy: "Lut? We don't have anything ready for Lut. We don't even have anything on order for him. We have some incomplete requests that they never finished?"
I called Trask and asked him to page the nurse, to see if this was something we could only get from the hospital pharmacy or if we could get it filled at our regular pharmacy. Then I walked back to the car, dumped off all Lut's stuff, and walked back up to his room.
Nurse: "Sure, we will give you a paper prescription! You can get it filled anywhere. Just waiting on the doctor to sign it!"
Me: "You can't call it in? Uh, okay."
After another wait, we finally leave the hospital at 3:55. We wade through the beginnings of rush hour traffic, and go to the Wal-Mart pharmacy two miles from our house.
Wal-Mart Pharmacist: "Oh, this is a compound. We don't do compounds here, sorry. Some of the Walgreens do. CVS on Noland Road, maybe?"
So I go to Walgreens on Noland Road, which is across the street from the CVS, figuring I'll ask CVS next.
Me: "Can you fill this?"
Walgreens: *takes script, takes all my insurance info*. "It'll be ready in an hour, hour and half."
I went home, made dinner, ate, talked a little to John when he messaged, and played a game of Small Worlds online with him. By now, it was 7PM and I hadn't yet heard from Walgreens, apart from an automated text asking me to acknowledge that I wanted texts, and then a second text confirming that I did. I called Walgreens. Their automated system had no record of my order. I waited on hold for several minutes to talk to a person. The person also had no record for my order. She went to talk to the pharmacy. I waited on hold for several more minutes.
Walgreens Pharmacy: "Oh, I thought I paged you before you left. We can't fill this. I just put it to one side."
Me: SCREAMING FOREVER.
Me: *drives to pharmacy, still screaming*
I waited several minutes at the useless Walgreens pharmacy to retrieve the piece of paper, and took it across the street to CVS.
CVS pharmacist: *makes many sympathetic noises as I complain vociferously about Walgreens* "We do compounds here, but we usually send them to our overnight pharmacist. I don't know if we have this drug in stock. I will look."
Me: "He's supposed to get this four times a day and the hospital had only given it to him twice when he left."
CVS pharmacist: *ransacks pharmacy looking for drug* "I'm afraid we don't have it. It's pretty obscure; a hospital pharmacy will probably have it but the other ones only would if someone else had recently placed order and they had some of the powder left over me."
Me: *thanks nice CVS pharmacist and tries not to cry*
Me: *calls hospital pharmacy to make sure they can produce this tonight*
Hospital Pharmacist: *checks* "Yup, we can."
Me: "You're open 24 hours?"
Hospital Pharmacist: "Oh, no, we close at 9PM."
Me: "Okay I can get there before nine."
So I spent another 30 minutes getting back to the hospital pharmacy, waited 20 minutes to get drugs, and finally went home so I could dose Lt. About 2 hours apart, because it was so late by the time I got home with drugs.
I guess the moral of this story is:
1) Eat lunch so you are not furious over every problem that arises
2) Never leave the hospital without all the medications you will need that day, whether or not it delays you.
Still. Six trips to four pharmacies over the course of six hours, to get one prescription filled. x_x
Scorecard:
Hospital Pharmacy: C for not having the prescription ready the first time (after telling the nurse it was ready! What the heck, pharmacy?), but at least made up for it by getting it ready the second time
Hospital nurse & doctor who signed prescription: C- Maybe it's not their job, but I feel like one of them should have known I was not gong to be able to get this prescription filled same-day anywhere else.
Wal-Mart Pharmacy: B. OK, he couldn't do it, but he knew that right away and attempted to redirect me to someone who could. And in fairness, if I hadn't needed it filled same-day, the CVS would have been fine
Walgreens: F-- NEVER GOING TO ANY WALGREENS EVER AGAIN STILL SO ANGRY
CVS Pharmacy: A+ pharmacist actually knew what she was talking about and gave useful advice.
All of this aside: Lut is home! \o/ ♥
This is a profound relief.
We are back to the 24/7 care routine, with daily visits to the clinic. On Monday, they will once again attempt to collect stem cells. This is scheduled for five days, which is interesting because previous attempts had all said "might take as much as three days". I am not sure if this is because it might actually take five days of collection, or if it's more "if your counts are not high enough to start collection on Monday, we tentatively plan to try again on Tuesday and maybe Wednesday, so here's some extra just-in-case appointments." We're at the clinic now and the doctor is supposed to see us this morning, so I'll ask him about it when I ask about his meds. This entry was originally posted at https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/625223.html. Please comment there using OpenID.