Dread Pirate Alice

Mabel at the vet, originally uploaded by Pirate Alice.

Mabel at the Vet and other things

Some know that upon my return from Cleveland Mabel had an emergency visit to the Vet. She had an abscess on her tail. The doctor drained it and she’s doing OK. She goes back on Tuesday, they’ll check her tail and make sure all is well.
But the vet was all like, “we’ll have to clip her tail and then we can drain the abscess…” and ya know, clip to me means, cut off her tail. I was so worried that I was a bad Kitty Mom that I let something go wrong to where her tail needed to be amputated!! The nurse saw my shock and explained that clip=SHAVE. So Mabel has her tail, all is well.
They gave me this cone collar to put on her so she wouldn’t chew or lick at her tail. When I got home and opened the carrier, I put it on her – upside down. She leaped out of the cage and tried to run down the hall to her food dish. The cone on wrong and the drugs in her system had her diving into the floor and the wall. I laughed so hard my sides ached. Once I composed myself I followed after her to get the collar off. We decided the collar was cruel and she hasn’t worn it since.

And then on Thursday it was just a total crap day. All was well until I left my apartment.

The unemployment office for the state of Illinois sucks ass. The crap they send to you is so LACKING in information. I want to know who I need to write to in order to complain about this shit. They send you a letter saying your benefits are “exhausted” but they don’t say a word about how an extension works or how to apply or what your next step might be. Is it so hard to put in a letter some basic information on how this works? And the bi-weekly letter about your next call to claim weeks…. how hard is it to put the phone number ON THAT LETTER?!?

I called the unemployment office because the website isn’t much more informative. And naturally the dude who answers the phone is just as shitty as the website. But essentially I find out there is nothing you can do. You wait for the government to decide you deserve more money, they send you a letter and that’s that. You don’t fill out anything, you don’t do anything… it just happens. Much the same way getting laid off just happens. Why can’t they give us more information? Why can’t they tell us this in the letter? It doesn’t make sense to me. And I’m sure I am not the only one who is angry and annoyed by this lack of information.

Well, today I got the letter telling me I get more money, which is good. But here’s hoping and praying and sacrificing goats or whatever to make sure I get a JOB so I don’t have to worry about this crap anymore.

Don’t trust your pharmacist

Does your pharmacy tell you what the pills they give you should look like? Is it on the bottle or in with the paperwork they give you when you pick up your meds? Is this something you even read before popping the pill in your mouth? Well, you should start reading it.

Usually I don’t bother checking, I trust the pharmacy to give me the proper pills. Today however, when I got home with my pills I opened the bottle, and was surprised to find that my usual large oblong blue pill was suddenly a very small round yellow/gold pill. I looked at the bottle and the drug name was correct, my name was on the bottle. As I turned the label to read more I saw that the description of the pill said, “This is a BLUE, OBLONG-shaped TABLET” (their caps not mine). I was suddenly very happy I hadn’t popped the mystery pill in my mouth without looking. I know sometimes pills change shape and color. A pharmacist had explained that to me once with a different medication I was on when something had changed. But this time the pharmacist said nothing, didn’t ask me if I wanted a consultation, didn’t ask if I had questions. Just asked me, “You don’t have insurance? Are you paying cash?” Fortunately, the CVS Pharmacy is not that far away. I put my coat back on and returned with the bottle of mystery pills.

“Remember me? I was just here. The pills in this bottle are supposed to be blue ovals, these are gold and round,” I said.
He merely gave me a confused look and walked over to another person behind the counter. He walked to a shelf and picked up a large bottle pulled some pills out. He put them back and grabbed another bottle. The other pharmacist shook them into some machine while talking on the phone. She then took the pills out of the bottle I returned and poured them into an unlabeled bottle. They both seemed confused as to what they had given me. He handed me the old bottle, with the new blue tablets in it and said only, “I’m sorry.”

What if I was unable to see? I would have taken these little round pills without knowing that I didn’t have the right medication. What if I was elderly and couldn’t read this incredibly small type? How often does this type of thing happen? These mystery pills could have killed me. Don’t they have some double check policy before they pass pills off to patients? This mistake frightens and angers me. So please, before you take your pills, read the information that comes with it. Make sure it looks like the prescribed pill it is supposed to look like. If it doesn’t, look it up online and ask your doctor or pharmacist before putting it in your mouth. If it is a new medication, check and double check. I got lucky because I have been taking this for some time and I know what it is supposed to look like, but if it was new, I’d have just popped it in my mouth, no questions asked. I’m in the habit of assuming my pharmacist knows what he is doing.