Don’t trust your pharmacist
Does your pharmacy tell you what the pills they give you should look like? Is it on the bottle or in with the paperwork they give you when you pick up your meds? Is this something you even read before popping the pill in your mouth? Well, you should start reading it.
Usually I don’t bother checking, I trust the pharmacy to give me the proper pills. Today however, when I got home with my pills I opened the bottle, and was surprised to find that my usual large oblong blue pill was suddenly a very small round yellow/gold pill. I looked at the bottle and the drug name was correct, my name was on the bottle. As I turned the label to read more I saw that the description of the pill said, “This is a BLUE, OBLONG-shaped TABLET” (their caps not mine). I was suddenly very happy I hadn’t popped the mystery pill in my mouth without looking. I know sometimes pills change shape and color. A pharmacist had explained that to me once with a different medication I was on when something had changed. But this time the pharmacist said nothing, didn’t ask me if I wanted a consultation, didn’t ask if I had questions. Just asked me, “You don’t have insurance? Are you paying cash?” Fortunately, the CVS Pharmacy is not that far away. I put my coat back on and returned with the bottle of mystery pills.
“Remember me? I was just here. The pills in this bottle are supposed to be blue ovals, these are gold and round,” I said.
He merely gave me a confused look and walked over to another person behind the counter. He walked to a shelf and picked up a large bottle pulled some pills out. He put them back and grabbed another bottle. The other pharmacist shook them into some machine while talking on the phone. She then took the pills out of the bottle I returned and poured them into an unlabeled bottle. They both seemed confused as to what they had given me. He handed me the old bottle, with the new blue tablets in it and said only, “I’m sorry.”
What if I was unable to see? I would have taken these little round pills without knowing that I didn’t have the right medication. What if I was elderly and couldn’t read this incredibly small type? How often does this type of thing happen? These mystery pills could have killed me. Don’t they have some double check policy before they pass pills off to patients? This mistake frightens and angers me. So please, before you take your pills, read the information that comes with it. Make sure it looks like the prescribed pill it is supposed to look like. If it doesn’t, look it up online and ask your doctor or pharmacist before putting it in your mouth. If it is a new medication, check and double check. I got lucky because I have been taking this for some time and I know what it is supposed to look like, but if it was new, I’d have just popped it in my mouth, no questions asked. I’m in the habit of assuming my pharmacist knows what he is doing.
