A few months ago, my pharmacy and I decided that our relationship had gone past the honeymoon stage and it was time to get difficult. First off, as I have mentioned before, I am really passive when it comes to dealing with people. For example, with telemarketers I  will let them give their sales talk since I know they’re just doing their job and I can just tune them out before telling thempolitely that I’m not interested. People who are giant pains in the asses are just doing their job and trying to make a buck so I’ll be nice to their face and pretend to listen while they try to sell me their kidneys.

I have been on the pill since I was about twenty-years old for various reasons which I won’t go into. I’m sure you have zero interest in my medical history and I don’t want to violate my family’s privacy by talking about our horrible cholesterol due to genetics (wait… oops). Various doctors have changed which one they want me on and, ultimately, they’ve figured out that my body hates the levels of estrogen found in most birth control pills and I have to be on low dosage else BAD STUFF HAPPENS.

I say this so you can look at the title and the previous sentence, and see where I am going with this.

Earlier this year, a weird pattern started between the pharmacy and myself. I would call to refill the prescription and would be informed that, unfortunately, my prescription had needed approved by my doctor so they needed my permission to call his office. Usually this took them about three days to get stuff straightened out and, other then the hassle of having to wait, I didn’t think much of it. My doctors office was still in Phoenix and I did not feel the need to switch it to the actual state I was living in since I really liked my doctor in Phoenix and wasn’t willing to switch doctors yet (and I’m lazy truth be told). I had a doctor’s office I go to here in Florida, however it usually takes me on deaths door to actually visit them. That, and the doctor’s office here in Florida screwed up my insurance claim which made me dislike them to the Nth degree.

On a rainy day (a Florida rainy day which is like buckets of water getting dumped on you) three months after this fun pattern started, I ran across the parking lot to the pharmacy and went inside soaked to the bone. Having not heard from the pharmacy after the latest game of telephone tag between them and my doctor I went up to the counter and asked for my prescription.

“Oh. Well. We don’t have any for you.”

Wha? Confused, I told them I had called it in five days ago. Looking in their system (while being thoroughly put upon that I was making them do their job) they found that my prescription had expired and I had to call the doctors office to straighten it up. Now tell me, honestly, couldn’t they have told me this before I made the trip to the store? Like when they figured out it wouldn’t be filled? After a quick call back to Phoenix I was informed that my prescription had expired and they refused to refill it until I had that wonderful exam of joy and enchantment known as a pap smear.

Gag.

Stuck, I convinced them to refill it for one more month which allowed me a full month to avoid going to the local doctor’s office. This office, too, would not write me a full year until I had a pap smear. After I scheduled an appointment and appeased them, they wrote me a month refill to take the pharmacy to tide me over.

Now, according to my doctor (who was LIVID to the point of screaming in the hallway yesterday when I showed her the changed prescription) pharmacies get a kick back on pushing certain generic pills on consumers. (This is, of course, what my doctor said so if you work at a pharmacy you can enlighten me). I can understand giving me a generic of Type A pill which has the same components as it, however, giving me a generic of Type X which is in no way the same as Type A? Really?

In an article called “Are Generic Drugs as Good as Brand Name Drugs?” it states:

“The FDA requires generic drugs to have the same quality, strength, purity and stability as brand name drugs. One area they may differ in, however, is inactive ingredients. One implication of this variation in ingredients is that you may find you have an allergic reaction to a generic drug that you didn’t have with the brand name drug because they use some dye or filler that wasn’t in the brand name drug.”

While this is talking about going from the drug and its generic counterpart, what frustrates me is that it is not like I was going from Type A pill to its generic counterpart. The pharmacy ignored the prescription written on the refill paper and gave me one with more estrogen and other ingredients that my body does not handle well.

Yeah, hope you enjoy that kick back while I suffer from the effects of switching medications and hit every single side-effect known to this pill. Thanks a lot, pharmacy.

I guess the lesson learned is not to be so passive about this stuff and research and ask questions. I know I should know better since my brother is a doctor and Mack’s Mom is a nurse but still, you’d think you could have faith in your pharmacy. After my doctors appointment yesterday the doctor wrote on my prescription “DO NOT SUBSTITUTE” but it makes me wonder: how many people suffer side effects so pharmacies can get some sort of kick back for offering a completely different generic brand of medication?

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