[lurkingforacure]

Hello all,

I feel compelled to share what happened to us yesterday so that you can be on guard. It's not that big a deal, really, but could have been.

I went to get my husband's Mirapex refill and just happened, by sheer coincidence, to look at the pill size in the bottle as the gal was ringing me up. Odd, they seemed bigger than I remembered. I checked the bottle, and was shocked to see they were for 1.5mg instead of the 1mg we have always had (because we split them in half, and it's .5mg each time).

I asked the gal to please check the call in from the doc (who had called the refill in for us) and she said it was correct, he did call in the 1.5mg size. I also had her check our history, and she confirmed that we never had received 1.5mg before, it had always been the 1mg pill size.

I asked, but no, the pharmacist cannot lower the pill size, they can only dispense exactly what is prescribed. So I had to call our doc's office and leave a message explaining what had happened and that they needed to correct the pill size and call the refill in again with the correct size.

My point: this is scary. I shudder to think what could have happened had my husband unknowingly popped one of the bigger pills. When you get your meds, be SURE you check them to be sure no one has made a mistake. This could happen to any of us, and we have to be so careful.

[jcitron]

Thank you so much for pointing this out. I'm lucky because my local pharmacy will call me if there's any difference in what I normally take and what a new script reads, or they will make a note to discuss with me any changes in the pill color or shape.

One of the things that you definitely have to watch though is the quantity. An elderly friend of mine is on some heavy medication for arthritis. She had her script filled at another pharmacy and they cheated her of a week's worth of pills. She went back to the pharmacy and made them count the pills in front of her with about a dozen customers waiting in line.

They came up short as well and a short time later one of the technicians was arrested for theft and illegal drug use.

John