Laboscope app

Thursday: this is a long post about frustrations at the pharmacy yesterday. Don't read if you don't want to. That is okay.

I do not appreciate being lied to.

I have been chasing up my overdue prescription eye drops for over 2 weeks now. The regular pharmacist had told me to come back this week if they weren't in and he would get a prescription for some different ones for me.

The regular pharmacist was not in yesterday, but the lady who looks a slip of a girl, dispenses medicines as the pharmacist does. 

I asked the counter assistant if my  eye drops are in and gave her the owing slip. After checking, she told me they were not in and they were none available, and handed the owing slip back to me. But, I have now run out I said and the pharmacist had said to come in today and he would order some different eye drops for me.

So, she tells me to sit down (we finally have two chairs now in the pharmacy), and she goes and asks the lady pharmacist. I am in a good position to lipread the conversation between the counter assistant and the lady pharmacist, despite them being about 15 metres away, (by the way my lipreading skills are absolutely amazing at a distance, it is harder to do near to when I have to constantly move my head to find who is speaking, and I followed very interesting conversations years ago, in the pub...). Tell her (that's me), the lady pharmacist said, that each time we have ordered her eyedrops, they have sent the wrong ones, and we cannot let her have these wrong eyedrops, it's not allowed. And the lady pharmacist repeated that again to the counter assistant. Tell her we can't do anything about it, the lady pharmacist finishes.

And I am thinking as I am lipreading, what on earth is she on about. She has just made that up.

The counter assistant comes over, and repeats what she had been told, and goes to go away, leaving me with no eye medication, and no way of getting it. I had already been back many times for these particular eye drops. 

I say, hang on, please will you listen to me. So I explain about St Paul’s Eye hospital, and them prescribing new eye meds earlier this year, and that this empty packet I was showing her were the eyedrops that had been prescribed earlier this year, and that it was on their pharmacy system. And that the regular pharmacist had said, a few days previously, he could get them represcribed for me if my current eyedrops were still unavailable. In any case, I explained, it is on the system that I can go back to the previous eye meds any time I want, if I don't like the new ones. 

So the counter assistant went back to the lady pharmacist and explained what I had said. The counter assistant came back with, these eye meds are not on the system (the lady pharmacist hadn't even looked). And the lady pharmacist had finished with, we can't do anything.

On my pharmacy computer system are details of previous medicines, and what the regular pharmacist does is hand me a previous same kind of med if the new one is unavailable, and then he sorts that out for me. The regular pharmacist says he can do that because it is already on the system. 

Anyway, this went back and forth for an hour and a half. I had been out to see my friend all day, and my car had shown the temperature as 31C. And we had walked out of icy air conditioning places into a wall of unbreathable hot air. So, I am very tired, but despite this, all the while I am very polite and courteous with this counter assistant. I had asked when the regular pharmacist would be in and she didn't know. I also explained I have 3 different eye conditions, and I cannot use any old cheap eye drops because they make my eyes worse, and I am allergic to them. I am under the care of St Paul’s eye hospital in England. I need these prescription eye drops. 

The counter assistant lady was really nice and helpful, unlike the lady pharmacist who appeared so unhelpful. And by the way the lady pharmacist appeared to be very unhelpful to other customers who were making health enquiries, while I was waiting all that time. Whereas the regular pharmacist would take time out (5/10/15 minutes) for each customer enquiry, and help them. That is actually his job (more that it was before), I have a printed sheet which explains what the pharmacist (from this pharmacy at least), can do now for you now.

Normally I order my prescriptions online, but the site was shut down over a month and a half ago for updating and was to return on 27th July. It has not returned yet. It is now 11th August. The site says "Practice currently unavailable".

Yesterday while I was there, there was a constant stream of people walking into the pharmacy with repeat prescriptions to put in the shoebox on the counter. It was stuffed full. They must be in the same boat, not to be able to access the online site.

This practice/I don't have a GP, and  there has been no GP's in this practice since 2019.

I googled online, and I find there has been a computer system outage for the last month in the Welsh NHS site for various things. It seems to be a bit far reaching.

I don't know what to think. It is scary.

I am waiting for the helpful counter assistant to text me on Friday. She says she cannot promise to have my eye meds, but she promises to push and push with this to see how far she can get. I believe her, but at the end of the day, she is a counter assistant who doesn't have authority in this. But her eyes matched her words when she told me she will try as hard as she can on my behalf.


I apologise for this being a long post to read, but it was my frustrating day yesterday, and I couldn't sleep last night. I was unable to read some books I bought yesterday, because my eyes were far too dry.

Creative is borage in a kaleidoscope in Laboscope.

Now I need a cuppa and a rest.

Take care...