About 9 days ago I had a fluke accident and broke my hip. I'm healing and my brain fog is slowly lifting, so I want to share a warning.
If the hospital doesn't have everything straight about your prescriptions before you leave, stay put until they do.
They gave me two prescriptions - a pain pill and a muscle relaxer. They told me I
could just use Tylenol and might not need the other, but just in case... Then they asked where to send them. It's not my favorite place to shop, but Safeway in Newport is closest to home.
So - they sent one to Safeway in Newport and the other to Safeway in Sandpoint. I had said no to Sandpoint, because my husband has painful knees and their pharmacy is clear at the back of the building.
The nurse said "Oh, it doesn't matter. Just go to Newport and they'll call Sandpoint and get it transferred."
Today we decided Tylenol just wasn't cutting it and I wanted to try the other pill, so I called Safeway to make sure my husband could pick these up.
Nope. He couldn't. They won't transfer prescriptions between their pharmacies. Apparently, there are rules about that.
After 4 calls, I got through to the pharmacy and heard "no," so called the doctor's office to see if they'd send it to Newport. Nope. They couldn't do that because it was the hospital that wrote the prescription. (Did you know hospitals could write?)
So I called the hospital and they said they didn't know what to do because the doctor who was in charge that day wasn't there.
I was talking to the manager of the surgery department, thank goodness. She not only was nice, she wanted to make the effort to help. She called back about an hour later, telling me that the surgeon's assistant was sending a new prescription.
Good, because my husband had already left for town.
But that didn't matter. He was able to get one of the prescriptions, but an hour later the doctor's office still had not phoned the pharmacy - or else they had the same trouble that the surgery manager and I had in getting them to answer their phone.
Tomorrow is another day...and it's only 20 miles away.
So my warning:
If you see that something isn't right with where a hospital or doctor's office is sending your prescription - don't listen to "It's too hard to change." Make them fix it before you leave.
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