Dropping The Information Ball

Like most folks on the face of the planet, i take mediciation for a newly diagnosed ailment, that in a future blog, i'll tell you all about. in any event, nothing to worry about dear readers...earlier this week, on monday afternoon, to be exact, i went to my local pharmacy to pick up the refill i had for my perscription, when the pharmacist had a quizzical look on his face. i knew something was immediately wrong when he told me, that he was unable to fill it, due to the minor fact that the medication i use, was recalled!

i was floored, not expecting to hear that & provided that i only had two days left of the medication. so i asked him what my options were. he smirked & said that he didn't think my medication would come back onto the market in the next three days & suggested i call my doctor, which a good friend of mine also suggested. so, that's what i did on monday evening, i paged my doctor. within 15 minutes she rang me back & i explained to her the reality of the situation, to which she gave me a lecture about my call, telling me it was not life-threatening & i should have waited until the morning to call her office and so on and so forth!

i wasn't amused, in light of the fact, that i was still in the dark about the recalled medicine and at this point, my doctor & the pharmacy knew, apparently for a few weeks that it had been recalled and didn't bother to inform me. in any event, she called the pharmacy, who in turn called me back & told me that i had the new perscription waiting for me.

the following (Tuesday) night, i went into the pharmacy to pick up the perscription & asked the on-duty pharmacist why it had been recalled. turns out the latest & most recent lots hadn't had enough potentcy in the drug itself. i asked if that meant all this time i was taking it, if it was like taking a placebo, which the phramacist didn't really give me a straight answer. she suggested i call my health insurance company in the morning to ask them about it.

so, this morning (Wednesday), i called up my health insurance company & asked someone on the "pharmacy team," as they phrase it & was told, that yes, indeed, it was recalled & they were only informed a week ago.

now, i'm not the kind of man who sits & waits for things to happen. i go & make them happen, meaning, i do read the news & keep up on all sorts of events, but apparently i missed this one. i suspect a lot of other people missed this too. i seem to recall (no pun intended), that this particular drug & its manufacturer, has had previous setbacks, seeing it in the news overseas several months ago, involved in a lawsuit, no doubt. it always a plus for me taking a medication that has been sued for or against...

but my main beef remains. whose job was it to inform me that this drug was recalled? the pharmacy? my doctor? my health insurance company? well, i personally think that all three should have made some valiant effort to inform me, instead of leaving in the dark. they all dropped the ball this time & they can do as much finger-pointing at each other as they want, but the end result will probably be, that they don't really care & they will carry on as if nothing happened. such is the way of the world, particularly in these united states.