Oh, we’ve had the online system for about a year - that’s not the issue. It’s that we actually seem to be going backwards in terms of expectations. Three (working) days just to approve a repeat prescription now. It might not matter as much if the pharmacy was reliable, but they don’t seem to carry any stock, and try to source everything last-minute - which doesn’t always work - leaving me with a crisis! So I’ve already taken to ordering things earlier and earlier, to cope with the now almost expected: “There’s just one or two things we’re still trying to get hold of”, or: “You should have queried it earlier - it seems to have been overlooked!” Now the doctor’s needs increased notice as well. 24 hours might be neither here nor there if I could depend on the pharmacy, but I can’t.
Every time I order, it’s with apprehension about how long it will take, and whether everything will turn up OK.
I used to be with Boots, but they were just as bad, if not worse. They could not tell the difference between drugs I always need (which should be on auto-repeat), and drugs I take only as-needed (which shouldn’t). With the result I was receiving - and expected to pay for - stockpiles of medicine I didn’t need, because they’d placed it all on automatic repeat regardless. They also used to “mislay” prescriptions - and then argue about when they’d been submitted.
I know I have MS, but I’m not feeble-minded yet: I used to make a note of when I requested things.
“But you only put it in yesterday!”
“No, I put it in last week.”
I never found out if this was just incompetence, or deliberate false record-keeping, to cover up that somebody forgot to do it. (You can imagine, can’t you: “Oh, just put it in the book that she only ordered it yesterday - she’ll never be able to prove any different!”)
But the final straw came when they tried to give me a total stranger’s prescription, claiming I lived with him, and had agreed to collect them on his behalf. When I denied all knowledge (it’s not that I wouldn’t do someone a favour and collect their drugs, if it’s somewhere I go for my own anyway), they treated me as if I was simple, and had agreed to do it, but forgotten! But I live on my own, and if I had somehow agreed with a neighbour I was going to collect drugs for them, I’d certainly know. I can be a bit absent-minded at times, but not to the point of forgetting a whole arrangement that I was going to pick up someone’s drugs. Besides, if I had somehow done that, I’d have recognised the name, and thought: “Oh sh*t, yeah! I did say I was going to pick up his stuff for him, didn’t I?”
So I’m absolutely positive I didn’t agree it with someone and forget. But when staff speak to you as if you’re a sandwich short of a picnic, you do start to doubt your own sanity. They were so emphatic about it, I actually came home wondering: “Could it even be possible I’ve somehow agreed to collect someone’s prescription and lost all recollection of it?” It’s unlikely in the extreme, as most of the neighbours know I’m ill, and they drive, but I don’t. So it’s more likely they might offer to fetch a prescription for me, than the other way around. Why would anyone ask a sick person, who doesn’t drive, to run errands for them? I’m positive it never happened, despite Boots’ best efforts to convince me otherwise.
Tina
x
