December 13, 2018, 3:30 p.m.
On the night of December 9, I went online to my Pharmacy record to order a refill of my current dosage of levothyroxine since I had not heard from Dr. Prabaharan about changing it. I got a message from the system that this medication could not be mailed; I had to pick it up from a Kaiser pharmacy. And I wondered why, but I intended to pick it up anyway since I had only 6 pills left and next Saturday would be my last one.
After I placed my order, I got a message that my prescription would be ready for pick up after noon on Thursday, December 13. I typed into the comment box that I would like a text to my cell phone when it was ready. I knew from past experience that it could be ready in a day or two, long before Thursday. But this time, it wasn’t.
I stood in the check-in line and waited my turn. I handed my card to the cashier. She asked what medication I had ordered. “Thyroid medicine,” I said.
“What dosage?” she asked. I wasn’t prepared for that question! But while I was racking my brain trying to remember, she said, “There’s no record of thyroid medication in your record!”
“Well, it was there on Monday,” I shot back, “because that’s when I ordered it!”
She was silent as she searched further in my records. “You ordered it in June,” she said, “and it was 125 mcg.”
While I was thinking about that, I remembered that it was before Dr. Prabaharan had changed the dosage in August. “Oh, here’s one in September,” she went on, “at 112 mcg.”
“Yes!” I remembered now. “That’s what I ordered. And I got a message that I could pick it up after noon today.”
She looked at me. “That dosage is out of stock,” she said, “and we don’t know when we’ll get any more in.” Then, “You’ll have to call your doctor.”
“I have two pills left,” I said, holding up two fingers. “I’ll be out of medication on Saturday.” I gave no indication that I was moving away from her station.
“Just wait here a minute,” she said, trying to disguise her desperation, “and let me ask someone.”
In a few minutes, a man in a white coat came to the station, holding an amber prescription bottle. He explained that this dosage was, indeed, out of stock Kaiser-wide. “What we are doing in the meantime,” he explained, “is to fill your prescription with one and a half of 75 mcg tablets to approximate the 112 mcg dosage.” My mind couldn’t do that computation that fast. “Is that okay with you?” he was asking now.
I nodded. What choice did I have?!? I saw the big red card in his hand that said MANDATORY CONSULT. Yes, I know that’s required now for any new prescription–and for any change in dosage of a current prescription. He directed me to go to station 1, which I did.
The consult pharmacy tech went through the explanation again. This time I asked what exactly one and a half 75 mcg would be. So she did the computation and wrote it down. 75. 38. 103. (I later re-did the computation on a calculator and saw that the total was 113 mcg, not 103.) When I got home and looked in the bag, I discovered that they had thrown in a brand new pill cutter!
