Thursday 27 November 2014

A productive day

It's been a good day, all in all. The Ocado delivery was in very good time; in fact Sheila was on her way over to the office about something when she spotted the van turning in at the gate. Driver Gareth was due his break and was planning to take it at the marina before getting in touch. However, he soon drove round to meet me, I having been alerted by Sheila via the PMR radios we carry when a delivery is due.

Sheila got back just as we finished unloading the crates into the boat. Gareth had asked the classic question – "Isn't it cold in the winter?" – so I invited him in for a quick tour. Since the Squirrel was doing its thing, he quickly realised that that answer is definitely "No".

We'd had an email from fellow blogger Roger on The Cat's Whiskers; he and wife Pat are in Mercia for the winter. Since there was some time before lunch, we though we'd take a walk round the marina and look in on them. Setting off at half eleven, we set a record time for one round of the main area: an hour and a quarter.

We kept bumping into folk for a chat, as well as having a rabbit with Roger. (You could make a film about that...) It meant a late lunch, but we didn't care.

Afterwards, I took a walk down to the surgery and pharmacy to pick up my prescription. Regular readers may recall (well, those who are pharmacists might ;) ) that my Ganfort eye drops have been changed to a preservative-free format to reduce my red-eyed glare. The question was, would the local system cope?

Answer: again "No".

The prescription had indeed been changed to say "preservative-free" after the usual specification for the drops, but because it didn't say "unit doses" the pharmacy had dispensed the usual bottles (I get two months' supply at a time).

At least having the pharmacy and the surgery in the same building meant that I could walk through to reception, see one of the staff and get a modified prescription on the spot. The pharmacy hadn't got it in stock, of course, so I'll go back on Monday to get the right stuff. It's a good job I always ask for a repeat whilst I've still got over a week's supply left in case of just this sort of thing.

On the way back home, I had a thought. The pharmacist must have been aware that the stuff she was dispensing was not what was wanted, even if the description on the script didn't meet her requirements (I do understand that obsessionality is a good trait in a dispensing chemist). All she needed to do was to go next door herself, say "I can't dispense what you want here, please do a correct script for me." Instead of which, she dispensed two bottles which will now be destroyed, as meds once dispensed can't be reused, even if unopened.

Or, just maybe, was it that the dispenser didn't notice the extra words on the form, called up the existing entry on their computer and dispensed that, after which said error was not spotted by the pharmacist when she signed off the prescription? In which case the tale about "it's the wrong description" would be an example of posterior protecting male cow faeces.

After all, the out patient pharmacy at the Royal Derby (which is a branch of Boots) had no problem dispensing "preservative-free Ganfort" without any reference to unit doses...

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