It's been a long, long time since I've written here.
But I have two exams tomorrow, and I don't feel like studying, so I figured this would be a reasonable alternative.
Pharmacy Law has got to be the most mind-numbing subject ever created. I skipped pulmonology and endocrinology yesterday morning to catch up on the readings. I only read 60 pages, but last night at work, I was in my own world the entire night and felt like a zombie. I think there's something in the pharmacy law textbook that literally sucks the life out of you as you read.
On a similar note, law class is 3 hours, from 2:30-5:30pm. The professor has the most amazing sedative effect I've ever encountered. I begin class wide awake (with my crossword and sudoku hidden cleverly behind my notebook), but within 10 minutes, I am dead to the world. Normally, I wake up when he gives us a
4 minute break (4 minutes?! c'mon, I can't even run to the bathroom, unzip, unleash, pee, repackage, zip, and wash my hands that fast), and run at the door and into my car and drive home. But today, I decided that since the exam is tomorrow, I really should stay and pretend like I'm paying attention. Instead, I played Scrabble on my phone. For 3 hours.
The manufacturers of all these sleep aids should really look into "Professor Gainor on Tape," instead of all these drugs with weird side effects such as nocturnal binging.
Coffee and EQ2 appear to be reasonable antidotes for my current zombie state. I have a cup of the former on my desk as I write, and I shall partake of the latter after I finish this post. I quote from a text message to Amybanana earlier today: "studying is for weenies" (maybe I said class, but I'm almost positive it applies to both).
I also have an abnormal psychology exam tomorrow night, but that's an elective, and everyone knows you don't study for electives. Besides, working in a retail pharmacy has given me first-hand experience on just about everything abnormal the DSM-IV has to diagnose, and I could probably give you a clinical presentation of each category better than most psychiatrists. Case in point: Yesterday alone I dealt with a schizophrenic, a bipolar, an obsessive-compulsive, and an epileptic patient in the same evening.
I should probably feel more guilty about not studying, but after 4 years (going on 5) of this stuff, I'm finding it hard to even go to class let alone set aside time to study.
On the subject of thieves:
One of the technicians was fired on Friday for creating false scripts, filling them, taking the medication, credit returning the script, and keeping the medication. By doing this, she made it so that the computer showed that the scripts were never filled, but the counts were off (by 200 on the Tylenol #4, 100 on the Norco). Since they're both C4's, normally this wouldn't have been noticed until the next biennial inventory was performed (see, I did pay some attention in Law). However, she was becoming neurotic at the end of her stint, and began to say we were messing up her own, personal prescriptions, and then trying to fix them or fill them too soon. The pharmacists eventually caught on, called the DM, and she was confronted and confessed. I don't know what's going to happen besides being fired. According to the Controlled Substances act, the DEA and the police need to be notified immediately when a theft in a pharmacy has occured.
However, on the more personal side of the issue, this lady was a genuinely nice lady. She was friendly, she was personable, she did her job well, she has a kid who goes to the same elementary school I went to... And now, now her life is practically ruined. Not only do I feel horrible thinking about what she's going to have to go through now (even though it was her fault and she could have prevented it), I have to feel even worse for her son, because I went through the same scenario when I was around his age (i.e. my father was fired and thrown into rehab after stealing narcotics from the hospital where he worked). I mean, that literally ruined that portion of my life and shaped a major portion of the person I am today. Granted, I personally don't dwell on the past and strive to let the incident be a part of my growth, but who knows how the technician's son will react to this? How will this shape his life? Will he learn and grow from it like I did, or will he let it steer him into the same downward spiral that his mother was trapped in?
Hmph...
On a lighter note:
Saturday morning, I was ringing up the first person of the day who was picking up his two prescriptions. I'm
not a morning person, so I really wasn't paying attention to what was going on. He was an older (50-something), overweight man with long, scragly hair and reeking strongly of cigarette smoke and last night's beer binge. All I saw was that we owed him 100 tablets of the one medication, and the other had to be ordered for Monday. I told the customer this, he got pissed, and asked me which one we owed him on. This is how the conversation went (patient=normal, me=
bold, my thoughts=
italics)
"Which one do you owe me on?"
"Premarin." Wait, wait, wait.. What's Premarin? Isn't that... yes.. that's definitely estrogen."Ok, and which one will be in on Monday?"
"The spironolactone." Huh, that's a pretty high dose of spironolactone. Well, he must have some bad blood pressure or something. Wait.. Didn't Dr. Volmer tell us that one of the side effects of spironolactone is man boobs? Oh... Jesus Christ..."Ok.. Fine.. Can you ring this up for me, too?"
"Ok." Yep, that's bright red hair dye he just put on the counter. Oh look, he shaved his arms, too.*twitch*
