Yesterday was a trip to the hospital. Despite my compromised immune system (and that of other patients on similar medication) we had to share the waiting room with a little boy with chicken pox. The potential for that to go pear shaped doesn't really bear thinking about. Shingles in my situation could be fatal. I did mention it to one of the nurses who got me out of the waiting room (I had my scarf wrapped around my face at this point, looking like a Ninja). But the thing was it wasn't only me who could have been affected. Plenty of others were there too. The nurse who got me out of the waiting room said she thought it was wrong but she 'wasn't allowed to comment or do anything.'
Anyway, my eyes are going bad again. I feel like I've been punched in the stomach. I mentioned it to my husband briefly, but I don't want to dwell on it with him because I can see it's tearing him apart. I just tell him I can live with it (not exactly a lot of choice there) and live with it I will.
The real fun and games though, began at the hospital pharmacy. My medication was changed, so I had to pick up a new, two week prescription. Simple, you might thing. No.
The thing is, that the medication I am on is hideously expensive. So although I was prescribed 112 tablets, they only come in boxes of 100. And they will not prescribe two boxes because that would be too much and too expensive. Nor can they split a box to give me the correct amount. So they sell me short but don't tell me. As it happens, I have some tablets I can use from my last GP prescription. But I can't stockpile these because:
(a) Once the GP knows I have had a hospital prescription, they will stop my tablets for as long as they think the hospital prescription will last (which means it will be short)
(b) once I don't pick up my tablets as usual from my local pharmacy they will stop ordering them. This means that the next time I go to pick up my prescription, they may be out of stock - and their suppliers will also be out of stock. Which means I can't have them.
And all the hospital pharmacy needed to do was split the bloody box!!!
I did ask them why they hadn't.... 'We aren't allowed to.'
So what I would really like to know is, where are these invisible NHS tyrants who force all and sundry to through common sense and joined up thinking out of the window?
Because I would very much like to get my hands on them.
