at the pharmacy

Last night, I overheard someone pleading with the pharmacist while
I was waiting for my prescription. He was almost in tears, hovering
between anger and frustration, pain and fear. He had run out of his
anti-inflammatory medication before the end of the month, and could
not get his doctor to approve an early refill. This has apparently
happened before. More than once.

While this new pharmacy of mine is shockingly generous and easygoing,
(by local standards - which is to say they do not treat me like a
criminal when I fill prescriptions for narcotic pain meds), they will
not give out prescription meds without a prescription. Not even "just
a few pills" to tide someone over to the end of the month. Not even
for lightly-controlled substances like COX-2 inhibitors. This is NOT
the pharmacy's problem, though I was impressed with how courteously the
pharmacist seemed to be handling it.

On my way out, I apologized for eavesdropping, and suggested to the man
in pain that this might be a reason to change doctors. His expression
went from frustrated to hopeless. "Well, he's the chief of internal
medicine at Harvard...I don't think I could do better." My doctor has
less impressive credentials, but at least he *tries* to treat my pain.
If I were running out of medication every month, he'd prescribe more,
or prescribe something different, or come up with a convincing reason
that I should be taking less of it. This is not trivial. Not when it
causes the kind of anguish I overheard last night.