So, how do you know someone's sick or injured at home and has been for some time? When the pharmacist at your local grocery store sees you standing in line to drop off a prescription, and he says, "so what does she need today?".
So we went to see Rita's doctor on Friday to have the stitches removed. The doctor prescribed some milder painkillers to help her deal with the pain. She's never quite found the groove for keeping ahead of her pain, so it's common for me to have to watch her cry in pain just about each day since this happened. Not fun. The emotional toll on me has been a bit more than I expected, but I try very hard to keep myself upbeat and try to keep her spirits up. I try not to lose my patience with her, I know she's in pain, and that she doesn't tolerate it very well. I try to stay ahead of her needs and make sure she's as comfortable as I can in light of her situation. To this end today, I went down to get her latest prescription filled. I dropped it off at the pharmacy, had the little conversation at the top of this post with the pharmacist, and told them I'd be back in 20 minutes or so as I needed to run over to the local hardware store. So, I did exactly that, then came back to pick up the prescriptions as well as some fruit & other things that she likes to eat so she'd have them for the coming week.
So, I manage to walk up to the pick up counter just behind some woman who's buying some Advil with Sudafed. In case you're not aware, at some point some genius figured out that pseudoephedrine is classified as a class 1 precursor for crystal meth, so they came up with the CMEA law. This requires that the pharmacy collect your name & address and limit the amount that you can purchase, and keep that information for a minimum of two years, and in Oregon, you actually have to have a prescription for it. This has got to be one of the stupidest laws I've ever seen. It took the pharmacy tech at least seven minutes to take down her information before she could actually sell it to her. I would like to know how often anyone EVER looks at that information if ever. I'd bet that it's never-ever looked at after it's taken down. This is a case of the whole of the American public being penalized by the bad behavior of illicit drug makers similar to the entire flying world being penalized by stupid laws that are already proven to not stop terrorists. This type of legislation shouldn't be allowed, it's knee jerk reactions to a short term problem. I also wonder how much if any this has slowed down the production of meth. I'd also bet that there has not been a significant change, and all the crap we have to go through to simply buy an over the counter drug is for naught.
So what does my being hung up at a pharmacy counter have to do with taking care of Rita? In the long term, probably not much, but in the short term it pretty much guaranteed I was going to get home from my errands after the Seahawks game got started. Now, once again, this is hardly an earth-shattering problem, but it's one of her all-time favorite things, and I'd promised to be home in time to wake her up for the game. Fortunately I'd thought ahead and set our DVR to record the game mostly because the last couple she didn't make it all the way through, so I wanted her to be able to watch the game afterwards if she decided to go take a nap.
I don't really have a coherent ending for this, but here we sit, watching the game together, and she's happy watching the home team stomp on the Arizona Cardinals. And yes, I was late getting home, but that just meant that we could fast forward through some of the commercials at the beginning of the game.
So we went to see Rita's doctor on Friday to have the stitches removed. The doctor prescribed some milder painkillers to help her deal with the pain. She's never quite found the groove for keeping ahead of her pain, so it's common for me to have to watch her cry in pain just about each day since this happened. Not fun. The emotional toll on me has been a bit more than I expected, but I try very hard to keep myself upbeat and try to keep her spirits up. I try not to lose my patience with her, I know she's in pain, and that she doesn't tolerate it very well. I try to stay ahead of her needs and make sure she's as comfortable as I can in light of her situation. To this end today, I went down to get her latest prescription filled. I dropped it off at the pharmacy, had the little conversation at the top of this post with the pharmacist, and told them I'd be back in 20 minutes or so as I needed to run over to the local hardware store. So, I did exactly that, then came back to pick up the prescriptions as well as some fruit & other things that she likes to eat so she'd have them for the coming week.
So, I manage to walk up to the pick up counter just behind some woman who's buying some Advil with Sudafed. In case you're not aware, at some point some genius figured out that pseudoephedrine is classified as a class 1 precursor for crystal meth, so they came up with the CMEA law. This requires that the pharmacy collect your name & address and limit the amount that you can purchase, and keep that information for a minimum of two years, and in Oregon, you actually have to have a prescription for it. This has got to be one of the stupidest laws I've ever seen. It took the pharmacy tech at least seven minutes to take down her information before she could actually sell it to her. I would like to know how often anyone EVER looks at that information if ever. I'd bet that it's never-ever looked at after it's taken down. This is a case of the whole of the American public being penalized by the bad behavior of illicit drug makers similar to the entire flying world being penalized by stupid laws that are already proven to not stop terrorists. This type of legislation shouldn't be allowed, it's knee jerk reactions to a short term problem. I also wonder how much if any this has slowed down the production of meth. I'd also bet that there has not been a significant change, and all the crap we have to go through to simply buy an over the counter drug is for naught.
So what does my being hung up at a pharmacy counter have to do with taking care of Rita? In the long term, probably not much, but in the short term it pretty much guaranteed I was going to get home from my errands after the Seahawks game got started. Now, once again, this is hardly an earth-shattering problem, but it's one of her all-time favorite things, and I'd promised to be home in time to wake her up for the game. Fortunately I'd thought ahead and set our DVR to record the game mostly because the last couple she didn't make it all the way through, so I wanted her to be able to watch the game afterwards if she decided to go take a nap.
I don't really have a coherent ending for this, but here we sit, watching the game together, and she's happy watching the home team stomp on the Arizona Cardinals. And yes, I was late getting home, but that just meant that we could fast forward through some of the commercials at the beginning of the game.
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