Caveat Emptor (Buyer Beware)

If I were to give you details of today, you would not believe me. Let me just say that the medication has been changed, a new nasal spray prescribed and that the drugstore gave me the new medication for last night and this morning, took back the dyspill to make the changes in medication until next Tuesday, but that there was an error at the drugstore. They gave me 2 pills that are not the same as what was in the modified dyspill they delivered at the end of the morning. I didn't notice the difference until dinnertime.
On Fridays, a woman spends the afternoon with Mum so that I can have some respite. When I came home at 5, she told me that Mum had been violently ill, her blood pressure had gone up after the episode, she had given her some juice and some toast to settle her stomach and then taken her blood pressure again. It was fine. Mum was still pale.
My mother never has indigestion, never. The only thing that could account for this was the new medication. So I called the drugstore to find out if it was a side effect. It was and I was told to give the new pills with food. I hung up, got the dyspill that had been delivered and that is when I noticed that the pills were not the same that Mum had taken the night before and this morning. These had the name of the product written on the caplet. What she had taken the prior evening and in the morning was not a caplet, it was a solid sugar coated pill, the same length, oblong-shaped, same colour. I remember that I looked at the pill last evening and thought to myself that Mum would have trouble swallowing it. I looked for a cut mark on it and there was none, nor was there any name.
So I called the drugstore again. They denied it. But the problem was not gone... What had Mum taken? What was the life of whatever she had taken? Had her system rid itself of whatever it was? I went to see my own druggist (different than Mum's) and asked if I could check the compendium. He suggested that she had gotten sugar coated aspirin and showed me the pill. It was not the same. The one Mum had gotten had no ridge at all on it and this one did.
What was I to expect? Do you think that one pharmacist will put a knife in another pharmacist's back?
So on the way home again, I stopped at the ER (we are Friday dinnertime, the clinic is closed, everyone is off on a happy weekend... a desert). Of course, having no patient, I could not meet a doctor, but I spoke with the head nurse. We analyzed the options (bring Mum in to be put under observation, do the monitoring myself and rush her to emergency if things got worse - she did give me the information that the regional hospital would be able to take blood tests to find out what Mum had been given - perhaps suspend all medications until I could speak with her doctor). When I got home, Mum was comfortable, her skin tone was good, she was shaken by the experience, but okay.
She found me crying in the kitchen while I was preparing her dinner - soup, soda crackers, a bit of cheese and some cantelope. She asked if she could do something to help. I answered «Yes, please don't give me any more trouble about eating. It's going to kill me.»
She ate her light dinner. We talked about the experience. We discussed how she was not going to be taking any pills this evening and how I would try again to reach her doctor tomorrow or any replacement to be given instructions on the protocol to follow.
We talked about my father (it will be 20 years ago tomorrow that he passed away). We cried a bit and said how we miss him. He was a pharmacist. In his whole career, he only made a mistake once in the lab and he discovered it right away. He was ashen and distraught by the experience. Had he been there today, murder would have been done.
At bedtime, her blood pressure was right on, she had no nausea. She ate a few cherries and half a brownie.
This blog seems to be turning out into a journal. I guess the experiences I will be living are probably not different than the ones any caregiver will face. If my experience can be helpful, then let it be.
The only good thing about today is that Mother ate her dinner without blowing her nose once. A red letter day.