In the Spirit of Christmas...

Levaquin Lady returned to the pharmacy today and once again showed me that the Spirit of Giving is never lost this time of year. 

She rolled up on our ride-on store grocery cart thing on a busy morning with more Levaquin scripts for her and her son. The "please give us twenty minutes" said by the technician was met with the usual blank face and a sudden inability to move the ride-on cart. Levaquin Lady was going to sit there and block traffic for the next twenty minutes (if she had to) to pressure us into moving faster.

We couldn't be mad, mind you, because as I said, she was showing us what the true Spirit of Giving means. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

A few days ago the Mighty Levaquin Boy was at the pharmacy late in the evening. He's here with a prescription for methylprednisolone 8mg (which for some reason is expensive at our pharmacy). He HAS to have it because he's allergic to prednisone (ba-dum-tiss). Trying to reason with Levaquin Lady or the Mighty Levaquin Boy on their medications has never worked in the past, so how is it going to work now? But he also has a script for Fluconazole. I try to tell him about Torsades and the possible interaction between Fluconazole and Levaquin, but he doesn't want to hear it. He just wants to know how much it is all going to cost.

As I said, methylprednisolone 8mg is not on our company's preferred list of medications so it is expensive. I tell him the price and I get the double take. I get a triple take. The Mighty Levaquin Boy then tells me about how he and his mom are destitute, poor beyond belief, begging in the streets, "gotta eat to live, gotta steal to eat," dirt dog poor. Oh please mister pharmacist, could you please, oh please do something?

We've been dispensing Levaquin to these people for three years now and I'm in the holiday spirit, so I tell him I'll sell him the meds at OUR cost. We're not losing any money (much, anyway) and he's getting the deal of the century. Levaquin Boy counters with, "Will it be less if I only get half the steroid?" I do some more computing and I get him an amount he can live with. I fill it, hand him info I printed on the interaction between Fluconazole and Levaquin, and send him on his merry way.

I'm proud of myself. I've helped someone who genuinely needed help. Poor 27 year old kid, living with his mom and can't find a decent place to live anywhere because everywhere they've been is infested with mold. How odd that I have multiple patients who live in the same apartment complexes that the Levaquin Lady has lived in but they've never had any problems. Despite all that, it seemed that Levaquin boy was genuinely in need of assistance. I did my good deed and Goofmart Pharmacy looks great in their eyes...

But back to today... as I'm filling the latest round of Levaquin for the Levaquin Gang, I notice something different about Levaquin Lady. The tech takes the meds to check her out (Nine minutes have passed during my flashback and she hasn't moved). 

"Mrs. Levaquin, your hair looks different," I say. It does look different. She's gone from being a blonde to a redhead and has a new hair style.

"Oh, yes, do you like it?" she asks? "I just had it done at [name of expensive hair salon] yesterday."

"It looks nice," I said, then added, "That was a really nice gift someone purchased for you." I admit, it was a loaded question.

Levaquin Lady responds, "Oh, no! I paid for it!" as she rolls away.

I'm in shock. Days ago I'm told that her and her son are completely destitute and here she is with a fancy new hair color and style.

Draw your own conclusions. As for me, I'm just the Crazy RxMan, falling for every whim of stupidity known to man.