Your Pharmacist Knows Best

tussionex.jpgI don’t remember yesterday. At all.

See, as many of you know, I’ve been sick for about a week now. I finally went to the doctor (Donna made me, I won’t lie), and he gave me some prescriptions, and took some of my blood. He also took some of my money, so it seems a little unfair.

One of the prescriptions he gave me was for Tussionex, which is a cough medicine that contains codeine. I’m allergic to codeine, and my medical record shows I’m allergic to codeine, but the doctor said I should be OK. When my wife went to the pharmacist to get my prescriptions filled, HE noticed I was prescribed codeine, and HE thought it was a bad idea, but since the doctor acknowledged my allergy and said it was OK, the pharmacist did fill it. I should have listened to the pharmacist.

The first few days, I handled the codeine just fine. I took it before going to bed, and managed to get decent sleep. The third night, however, was not so great. I took the medicine before bed, and didn’t get a moment of shut eye.

All night long, I itched from head to toe. In fact, I still have some red marks on my face from scratching all night long. I couldn’t get out of bed, because I was so dizzy I couldn’t walk straight. And to top it all off, by morning, I didn’t feel any better, and apart from the itching lessoning, I kept feeling worse. By midmorning, I was so dizzy, I could barely walk to the bathroom — but walking to the bathroom was pointless anyway, because I couldn’t urinate no matter how much I tried. (Overshare, I know)

Apparently, I felt the need to get out and move around (maybe to work the medicine out of my body), so I volunteered to dog sit for my sister in law. I vaguely remember that. After THAT, however, I guess I helped our youth group rake a lawn, and traveled across town to a pizza party. The only thing I remotely recall about the latter is sitting in a couch, with no idea how I got there, or how I got home afterwards. It made for a scary realization this morning when I woke up. I was messed up yesterday!!!

So yes, the doctor will be getting an earful tomorrow. I’m not going to sue or anything, but dog gonnit, I’m gonna call him out on the carpet. The moral of the story? Listen to your pharmacist. And your wife.

8 thoughts on “Your Pharmacist Knows Best”

  1. Doing well now, thanks. I have 3 days of catchup at work though, so that sucks.

    I have a huge writing-related project coming up too, which is exciting, but killing the chances of me succeeding in NaNoWriMo. šŸ™

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  2. Dude, just telling you for your own information so you really know whats going on before you slam the doc and have it documented in stone u think ur alleric to codeine. The crazy itching, not being able to pee, and feeling groggy-dizzy are just normal side effects from all medications containing opiate type narcotics, which the hydrocodone in tussionex is. It just sounds like you have a really low tolerance to opiates, which is typical for someone like you who probably only takes these every blue moon. So next time just take like half or one fourth the dose, u probably just had too much dope in ur body for ur system. But you really wanna be careful about having it actually documented as allergic to codeine or opiates when thats not really the case, because if you ever have a really bad injury or need surgery in the future, you don’t want to be the guy who gets screwed and left in pain because you are “allergic” to opiate painkillers when really you are not.

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