Tag Archives: pharmacy

Red Valerian

Day 193

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I don’t like it when it gets this hot (about 25 degrees Centigrade. I know it’s not hot by some standards but it’s hot for me. It’s still about 20 degrees now, at 1.30am. I’m not use to this sort of heat. I’m much happier when it’s cold. Apart from the temperature being more comfortable it’s easier on my mood. I can be stoic in the face of the cold, damp and fog, but it’s hard to be grumpy when our weather is rivalling the Mediterranean.

I have written nothing for two nights now, but I did managed to watch some old episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies on Prime tonight. We seem to have run out of things we want to watch, and this is what it has come to. Humour in the early 1960s seems to have been less demanding. The clue is probably that I loved the show when I was a kid. This is not a sign of complexity or intellectually challenging humour. AS I said to Julia – fro many of the jokes it was probably their first time on TV.

I had a call from the pharmacy tonight. I have noticed that the NHS prefers to ring the home number when they can. They tell me that it gives a better connection. this may be true, but it sometimes doesn’t get answered because we tend to suspect all calls on the landline of being nuisance calls and don’t always answer it. Just one more foible of the NHS. The NHS seems to be involving pharmacists more and more. They are, to be fair, highly trained health professionals, but they aren’t trained as GPs, so I’m ambivalent about it. Review my drugs by all means, which is what they are trained for, but when it comes to diagnosing and giving health advice I’m not so keen.

 

 

Day 5

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This might be a slightly misleading title, because it’s not quite 9am. I have, however, got up early, moaned about having to get up early, got stuck in traffic going for my blood test, moaned about traffic and inconveniently placed roadworks, struggled to park, moaned about parking, and, finally, had a blood test.

The tester took three attempts but didn’t panic. Yes, strange as it seems, seeing as they are not the one being stabbed in the arm, they often get agitated if they miss first time. I know this because, as I have said before, they often do miss with my tricky veins.

I don’t mind a phlebotomist taking three attempts because it’s a difficult job. I do mind the other stuff because with a bit of planning  much of it could be avoided.

All I want is a blood test at the GP surgery. I’ve been having them there for months, but because of the number of nurses needed to give vaccinations there are none for blood testing now. The result of this is that I have to get up  at 6.30, add to the congestion, try to beat the staff to a space in the car park where staff, according to the big notice, are not supposed to park and then write a blog post to moan about it.

Is this what my “day off” is meant to be like? I haven’t had my breakfast yet and I already feel like I’ve put in a good day’s work.

“Work” was my 250th word, so I will leave it there as it’s my self-imposed minimum. If I carried on I would just start moaning again, as I’ve just been engaged in conversation with the pharmacy regarding a prescription that has disappeared. I didn’t want it, but they told me they had it for me. Julia went in to pick it up this morning and they now deny all knowledge of it. My original thought, that this was the most inefficient pharmacy in the world (you may have heard me mention this several times) has now been replaced by a theory that there are really two pharmacies working in parallel universes, which would explain why their right hand (in Universe 1) doesn’t know what the left hand (in Universe 2) is doing.

Header photo is my standard heron photo, looking hunched, dejected and/or grumpy. It seemed apt.

An Interesting Day

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Got up late and felt sluggish. Socks went on OK but the trousers fought back and it took some time to sort out. After that it was down to the pharmacy to sort things out (again) which took nearly half an hour). Then, with what was almost a bin liner of dressings and bandages, I staggered across to the doctor. Here I had a blood test. The nurse in question has a good record of getting the blood, but clearly learnt her testing technique in a time when patient pain was not such an issue.  They are still short of tubes. There was a short wait after that as I changed nurses and gat new bandages. The leg is looking  a lot better. I’m still not keen on having it attached to me, but it’s not as repulsive as it was last week.  I now have,enough bandages to make myself into a passable mummy for Halloween.

As I left the surgery I had a phone call –  it was the shop asking if I was anywhere near McDonald’s as we had visiting London dealers and they were making a day of it.

That was about the end of the excitement apart from the tempura pork. We had a pork joint at the weekend and still had some slices left so Julia did it in tempura batter and put sweet and sour sauce on it. It was delicious.  We also had stir fried vegetables but, as you know, I consider them a penance rather than a pleasure. Fried pork in batter with a sticky sauce, on the other hand, is a real pleasure.

The diet?

I’ll get back to you about the diet.

The picture is an old selfie from a day when Julia left me waiting in the car and I ran out of inspiration to write haiku. At that point it’s either turn to limericks  or selfies with special effects . . .

Pathetic Shambles

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Julia went down to pick up some dressings for my leg. There were none, and the pharmacy denied all knowledge of them.

Rewind for a moment – a couple of posts ago I referred to having an argument and informing the GP’s reception that I considered their actions unacceptable.

It took me about half an hour on Friday and I left it that the pharmacy would order the dressings (if the doctor could be bothered to process the prescription) and have them ready for either Tuesday or Wednesday. I told them that I needed them for Tuesday, so it was urgent.

On Tuesday I queued, was told they had no dressings for me. Went to the nurse, who found some bandages in the back of a cupboard (GPs no longer carry stocks of dressings because they don’t want to pay for them out of their budget) and then went back to the pharmacy to queue again and listen to other people complaining about the service. I was given various excuses but told that they would be ready for me this afternoon.

And so Julia went down to pick them up (as mentioned in the first sentence). It took her two hours to sort it out. Yes, two hours.

There was no prescription, so I don’t know what we had discussed in the pharmacy the day before. Julia had to collect one from the GP. She took it to the pharmacy, queued, and discovered that it was addressed to another supply company (that’s the second time the doctor has done that, and unless you have the paper in your hand you can’t tell). Back to the doctor. Back to the pharmacy queue. They don’t stock them (which we had already discovered – they don’t stock any dressings due to space constraints) and they will have them tomorrow afternoon. I have an appointment for new dressings tomorrow morning but the surgery searched round and say they have enough in the cupboard to change the dressing.

Some of the dressings I have had over the last week have been pathetic. No wonder it isn’t healing. I could do better myself, but they won’t give me the name of the things I need. I am, however, going to search Amazon tonight as this is getting past a joke.

So, in case you got lost in the detail –

Pharmacy, pathetic shambles.

GP surgery, equally pathetic shambles.

The sad thing is that they are both staffed by people who are generally friendly and helpful, but trapped in some sort of system that encourages failure.

To give you some idea of what I do at work – I pack about 150 parcels a month and once every two or three months I get one wrong. Even if you say I only do 100 parcels and get one wrong every month the defect rate is 1%.

In the last eighteen months I have had about 40 interactions with the surgery and pharmacy. The surgery had let me down at least eight times and the pharmacy about the same. It’s a little difficult to remember as I don’t actually keep notes. Defect rate 40%.

 

 

 

 

 

A Tuesday Retrospective

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I seem to be having a week of looking back on the previous day. I’m not sure how this happened but I may as well go with it, and try to catch up.

My alarm went off at 6.30, which was cutting it a bit fine to get to the hospital for a blood test before work, but I didn’t really feel like getting up. In the end I turned over and went back to sleep anyway, finally shaking myself free of the covers at just before 7.00 It was still dark so there were no interestingly lit morning shots.

Down to the hospital, in to the waiting room, and there was nobody else there. Even so, I still had to wait five minutes for someone to conclude their conversation and deal with me. Five minutes isn’t a long time to wait, but when you want to get done and take your wife to work, it’s long enough.

The sample was easy, and taken using a syringe rather that all the modern paraphernalia. It didn’t bleed after she removed the needle, which is always a worry, a it suggests the clotting is too good.

I was home for 8am, as the murky grey night slid into a murky grey morning. Typical – the morning I think of photography, there is nothing to photograph. Julia was ready and we set off for work. There seems to be more traffic about again – some days you wouldn’t guess there is a lockdown in progress. It seems from a news article that numbers in schools are up on last time, which suggests that more people are going to work, and probably more are being accepted as keyworkers.

Julia has just been given a letter from work to confirm her keyworker status. She was a key worker working from home in the first lockdown and a keyworker at work for the second. They gave her a badge for that. She’s now a keyworker at work, and she has just been given a letter to prove it. It’s printed on a black and white printer, has handwritten amendments and, quite frankly, looks like  a bad attempt at a forgery.

This is typical of the way the project is managed. Several of the staff who ran for the hills last week, have returned. A cynic might suggest that it’s better than spending time at home with the kids, or that it’s an attempt to make sure they don’t miss out on their vaccination.

Next, I went to the pharmacy to wait in the rain, collect inaccurate prescriptions and try to make sense of the chaos. The electronic ordering system I am compelled to use by the NHS is a lot less accurate than the old one where you used to and pick up a piece of paper. I think I may have mentions (just once or twice) that although change is easy, improvement is hard. I may even have mentioned that “new and improved” systems are often not improved, and sadly are often not even as good as the one they replace. Part of the sorting process was ringing to give the pharmacy a reference number. I must have tried 20 times and the phone was either busy or unanswered.

Not long after I returned home, I missed a call from the doctor and had to ring back. It took twenty minutes, but I persisted as I thought they might be helping to sort out the double cock-up they have made with my prescriptions.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

No such luck. They were ringing to tell me my blood tests were done (they can be very quick when they want to be). I failed. The blood is clotting too well and I have to raise my dose of warfarin and go back for a blood test next week.

That takes me up to 11.30 and gives you a flavour of the day. That is, I think, a good place to finish. It is now just after mis-day and Julia is engaged in her second long work call of the day, despite it being her day off. I’m going to start making noise now, as a sign that we have better things to do.

Computers!

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Just a short post as I need to get to bed early – it’s flu vaccination day tomorrow, one of the biggest days in my social calendar. If it goes as well as my visit to the pharmacy today – a forty minute queue outside in a cold wind – it will probably cause more flu than it cures.

When I went to the Post office this afternoon I wasn’t able to send any post out because the computer system was down. There is, it seems, no manual system for sending post. There was a reasonably well-developed postal system in the seventeenth century, which they managed without computers and still found time to persecute witches and cultivate religious bigotry.

If I had time I would have a really good rant, particularly on the subject of pharmacy staff who don’t wear masks, but time, as I said, is short.

I seem to have been asleep most of the evening.

We had a couple of frustrating orders today – one where we’d got the postage wrong and faced a loss of £18 on the transaction and one where we seem to have sold the item through the shop and forgotten to remove it from eBay.

We bought a few lots in – mixed coins and a pair of First World War medals – sold a few bits, saw one regular customer and had to ask several people to put masks on.

I just need eighteen words and some photos and I will have done enough to meet the 250 word target – oh, I just did.

See you tomorrow with more ranting…

Another Senior Moment

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When I had a look at the last post, before going to bed, I realised it wasn’t there. I vaguely remembered that it had flashed up on the screen while I was doing something else and I think I probably deleted it at that point. I’m sure there should be a single button to restore it, but I couldn’t find it and had to reload it bit by bit. This is annoying.

It’s annoying because I had another senior moment, it’s annoying because I had better things to do with my time and it’s annoying because out there on WP there are probably people thinking “Does that idiot really think a picture of banknotes is a proper post?”

No. I don’t. And the worst bit of it is that the best I could do was American money. I live in a country where you can’t even get a decent banknote picture of my own currency. I do have a few somewhere, but there’s not enough money to be a suitable picture for an article about being  a millionaire. Or, in my case, not being a millionaire. Again.

The electronic prescription service, which I distrust, has failed me and I have had no text to tell me I have pills to pick up. It already takes two days longer than doing it manually, and now the system is even more delayed because it seems to have crashed. I will say no more, but I am very disappointed.

The pharmacy has a score of 2.7 out of 5 on Google, despite a few people giving it five with no further comment – looks like staff trying to boost the rating.One reviewer actually said he would have given it 0 out of 5 if he could have done. Thinking of it, that means it would score 1 out of 5 even if it was the worst place in the world.

If they think you order the pills too far in advance they won’t let you have them. If you order them just in time, the system breaks.

Of course, if they lose your paper prescription, as they did a few months ago, they ask if your memory is up to scratch. That’s why I’ve started keeping notes.

At this rate it looks like I might have to try keeping notes about how to work WordPress too.

Just two library shots for this one – a man writing and time passing. What sort of blogger can’t even be bothered to take his own photos?

brass pocket watches

Photo by abdullah . on Pexels.com

 

The Queue

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Sorry, I had to repeat the header picture again. I was going to take more photos today, but didn’t do any in the end.

We went to the pharmacy this afternoon. Julia needed more medication and we had ordered mine at the same time to cut down on the number of times we risked contact, both for us and the pharmacy staff.

They open at 2am. We went down at 2.15 and found a queue of approximately 18 people. We decided to have a drive round and come back later when the rush was over. At 2.50 we returned and found the queue had reduced to 17, though most of them were different people. Several of the people who had been at the back of the original queue had still not reached the shop.

Reluctantly, we joined the queue. As I said to Julia, it was a good thing she had arranged to pick her prescription up in advance, or we’d have ended up in a massive slow queue.

She told me to shut up. Apparently sarcasm does not make queues go faster. An hour later, I found myself agreeing with her. I nearly said: “At least it isn’t raining.”

If I’d said that, I’m sure it would have done. So I restrained myself.

The woman in front of us had her son with her. He was about 12 or 14 and about the same size as her. He had learning difficulties, which originally took the form of engaging in a game of pointing at me and laughing whilst saying “man” and “giant”. He also said “hello” a lot, asked our names and named our hair colours – in my case this was “blonde” so I can forgive him a lot. As they queued, and he became bored, he started wrestling with his mother. She was impressively strong, and very patient. I’m guessing that the lockdown is harder for her than it is for many of us.

As we got to the door of the shop, the woman in front let them take her place, which was pretty good considering it had taken us an hour by that time.

Julia went in before me. I went in a couple of minutes later. She got hers in five minutes, as it was already organised. It was to take me another half hour. I gave them the barcode the surgery had texted me. It didn’t work.

So much for technology.

I had to go across to the surgery. Biosecurity was not as tight as last week, and I was able to walk straight in. Strange, I thought. What was even stranger was the way they had piled up furniture and tape as a barrier. And the fact there was nobody there.

I double checked the notices – there were many prohibitions (this situation is heaven-sent for people who like giving orders) including telling me not to enter if I had an appointment, but there was nothing telling me not to just drift in from the street. Strange…

Eventually someone found me, issued a paper prescription and, after checking my identity on my driving license, gave me a password for the website, which should mean I can just order online in future. In theory. I’ll believe it when I see it.

And that was…

No, that wasn’t quite it.

They were short of Warfarin and had no pain-killing gel. The gel will be in on Monday and the Warfarin on Tuesday. I am, it seems, welcome to queue for an hour any time next week to pick the extras up. I can even queue twice, once on Monday and once on Tuesday, if I want.

This, as I pointed out, rather works against the whole point of self-isolation.

 

 

Dentistry, Decay and a Difficult Day

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First call of the day was dropping off Julia at work. The second was visiting the dentist, which proved to be the start of the decline.

The X-Rays showed a suspicious spot at the base of one of my teeth. It looks like decay. It also seems that I have strangely-shaped roots. After what happened with my wisdom tooth and its strangely-shaped root the words “strangely-shaped root” do not fill me with optimism.

To remove a wisdom tooth with a strangely-shaped root takes a team of medical students, power tools and just over an hour in the chair. It also involves a fair amount of pushing and pulling and the smell of burning.

There are three choices. One, go to a specialist, who may be able to save the tooth, but who would charge around £1,000 whether he saved it or not.  Alternatively, I could have it removed and have an implant fitted. That will be £1,500. Or I could just wait.

When the inevitable happens, and I am groaning in agony from a major abscess, I will have to go down to the dentist for emergency treatment and an extraction on the NHS. That will cost £56.30.

Tricky choice…

I then went to the pharmacy at TESCO, where they refused to supply me. One item is, it seems, difficult to get, so they suggested I try elsewhere. A second was out of stock, so they suggested trying elsewhere. They then handed me the prescription and suggested it would be simpler to (yes you guessed it) get it all elsewhere.

From there I went to the surgery for my blood test.

This didn’t take long as, for once, I bled extensively.  This would seem to indicate that the anti-coagulants are doing their job. I then continued to bleed, which was tricky.

From there I visited the pharmacy I used to use, who don’t find anything too difficult and who had all the necessary items in stock. Strange how a small shop can do things a multi-national can’t be bothered to do.

The rest of the day passed in a blur, looking for a birthday present for Julia. Yes, straight after the wedding anniversary and just before Christmas. It’s a tricky time of year.

 

Monday, Bloody Monday

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I have mixed feelings about Mondays. Mainly I like them because they are a new start after the weekend, but I’m prepared to make an exception for today.

Last week I made an appointment with the doctor for 8.40, which is a good time for me as early appointments usually run to time. It’s also, with it being one of Julia’s days off, early enough not to impact on the rest of the day.

Good plan, apart from one thing. She swapped days this week. Not only that, but she was asked to take a cookery session. She was also told it had to be banana cake because that’s what the group wanted. Then she was told she would have to buy the ingredients and claim the cost back.

So, feeling guilty at not being able to deliver her to work, I had to drop her off at the bus station.

At that point one of the “bags for life” gave up the ghost on the pavement. Fortunately we had a replacement in the back of the car.

When I got to the doctor I was glad I had my book with me, as my theory on early appointment timing  proved to be inaccurate. However, I quite like reading, and wasn’t too bothered. I also managed to get out, after a review of my tablets, without gaining any extra ailments, which is always a bonus. I’ve even managed to reduce the number of tablets I take.

In TESCO, my pharmacy of choice these days, I was ambushed and asked to answer some questions on my medication. It wasn’t exactly a searching set of questions, so I suspect I’ve just become a tick in a box. I’m not even sure if I’m irritated by this or not.

Once back home I spent time looking for a set of A4 dividers marked with the months. I was positive I had a set, and even promised Julia I would …

I suppose you can guess the rest. The set I had in mind has 20 numbered dividers, which just aren’t going to do the year-planning job I had in mind.

Did I mention the broadband keeps going off?

And I forgot to buy yoghurt in TESCO.

I think that’s it. I’m making soup in a minute and from there the only way is up.