I have one medication that I take every day. A week or so ago, a lady from my friendly CVS Pharmacy calls and says, "I see that you're almost out of this prescription. Would you like us to renew it?" I think that's damned nice of them…keeping an eye out to make sure I have my pills. I say yes, thank you. I mean, I'm not really out of it and would have renewed it myself in plenty of time, but they've saved me going to their website and clicking on something. So why not? On Thursday, I get one of those automated robocalls from my friendly CVS Pharmacy telling me my prescription is ready for pick-up. Fine. So far, quite convenient.
Last night, I go over to my friendly CVS Pharmacy to pick up said medication and find they have two prescriptions waiting for me — the one I need and one I stopped taking months ago. They renewed it, too. I tell them of their error and they return those pills to stock and charge me for the one I need but don't really need yet. Home I go with it.
At home, I look at the bottle and the instructions say, as they always do, "Take one a day by mouth for 30 days." But it also says on the outside, "10 pills." And sure enough, inside the little vial are ten pills.
I figure I'd better get this straightened out now. I drive back to my friendly (but apparently confused) CVS Pharmacy and point this out to the friendly CVS Pharmacist. No matter how clever one is, one cannot take one pill per day by mouth for 30 days if one has but ten pills. One needs…oh, I'm so bad at math but I would guess somewhere around thirty pills. The friendly CVS Pharmacist also does the math, agrees that I'm probably right and says, "You must have only requested ten."
I assure her that, appearances to the contrary, I am not that chowderheaded. She checks the computer and determines that — aha! — they only gave me ten of the pills because that's all they had in stock. "Why then," I ask, "did I get a call saying my prescription was ready when my prescription was not ready?"
She says, "It was ready. It just didn't have the right number of pills in it." As I absorb this strange new definition of the word "ready," she checks their inventory and discovers that they now have 14 more of the pills. "Will that help you?" she asks.
Again, I do some exhaustive calculations and determine that, well, 24 pills do seem to be closer to 30 than ten. But I will still need…hmm, six more pills, perhaps? "We'll have them on Tuesday," she says. "You'll have to come back for them." This means I will have made three trips to my friendly CVS Pharmacy to pick up one prescription…a prescription which, by the way, I didn't need refilled until the week after next anyway. This does not seem all that friendly to me.
I tell you, it's enough to make a person take drugs. Or it would be if they'd give you the right amount of them.