I think I want to firebomb my local pharmacy.
Okay, so maybe only theoretically, but still. The pharmacy shenanigans that go on in this town are enough to drive me fucking crazy. I take serious issue with the way that birth control is treated like some kind of privilege. Here’s the deal: I need a new pack every month, no surprises there. My doctor will only give me a prescription for three months’ worth at a time. So I have to schlep back to the damn doctor every 2.5 months, wait in their smelly waiting room with screaming babies and sick people, then wait in his stupid little office staring at the poster on the wall that details some kind of terrible infection, until I finally get to see him – all to say “I need another prescription for birth control.” A complete waste of his time and mine. Why I can’t get a year’s worth is beyond me: it doesn’t get you high, nobody is selling it on the black market, and it’s my right to choose to take it or not. So why is it treated like friggin’ Oxycontin or something? I’m not grinding this shit up and snorting it. I’m taking it so that I don’t end up with a goddamn baby. We aren’t living in the 1950s – you don’t need to ration it or treat it like something that’s going to turn me into a raving whore. It’s like Tylenol, for fuck’s sake! Just hand it over!
I went to the pharmacy a few years ago to pick up an extra pack of pills because I was going away and needed it, and when I went up to the counter and gave them my name and asked for the refill they had on record for me, the pharmacist said “You picked up your last pack two weeks ago. Why do you need this? You should still be using the last pack.” Excuse me? Oh, well actually I’m going to use them to decorate my bathroom mirror. I’m going to top a birthday cake with them. I’m going hiking and I need to be able to find my way home. Fuck you, man! What are you, the Birth Control Gestapo? Give me a goddamn break! I told him that I needed it, I know how to take the pill (once a day, it’s fairly simple), and to please fill it as I was in a hurry. Sweet jesus. It’s none of your goddamn business why I need another pack.
So after dealing with making a doctor’s appointment every 2.5 months just to waste half my day to get a refill, I find out that I can call my pharmacy and have them fax in a refill request. Awesome. So I do that. Not only does the doctor take his sweet goddamn time getting it back to the pharmacy (I understand you’re a busy man, but 4 days? Really?), but the pharmacy forgets to call me when it’s ready, even after THEY suggested they could do that, and after I visited them twice to see if the prescription was ready. So I show up there this morning, hoping that it’s ready and they just forgot to call me, and end up standing there like an idiot while the pharmacist ignores me and continues to print out labels and move pills from one bottle to another (or whatever the fuck they do back there). She finally decides to help me, and I get my prescription. I tell her, quite nicely, that they didn’t call me to tell me the prescription was ready two days ago, and now it’s too late to start a pack of pills. She says, “oh, well my guess is that someone forgot to call you.” Yes. Thank you. I KNOW. That’s the fucking problem, you dipshit. So thanks a lot, now my body is all fucked up and confused and full of wonky hormones. I ask her for advice as to when I can start a new pack or what the hell I can do, and she reads the instructions and tells me to take the pills I missed all at once. That doesn’t work if you’ve missed more than two days, so I point to the section that starts “If You’ve Missed Three or More Pills” and she says, “Oh, yeah, you can do what they recommend there.” Uh…aren’t you a pharmacist? Didn’t you study this? Aren’t you trained? You can’t even read the fucking instructions properly? No wonder you people didn’t call me back. I’m surprised you can even function on a daily basis.
Since my idiot doctor only gave me a refill for two months, I ask the pharmacist to fax him back for another refill, just to avoid this situation again and to be sure I have it on hand when I need it. She smiles and says “I’ll write a really big note this time.” Great.
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