Ever heard that phrase “oh, that’ll be more than my jobs worth”? Well, if you are British you might have. It’s a joke about the types of unhelpful people you can run into in heavily bureaucratic environments.

Oh, I could help you but it’d be more than my jobs worth to do that

That’s the feeling I get when I call the pharmacy to order more medicines for F. Not with everyone at the pharmacy, just the one lady.

You see we have a running repeat prescription that covers the whole year. At the beginning of every year, F’s Nephrologist makes out the prescriptions for all her medicines and sends them to the pharmacy. Every month, we tell them what we need and they deduct it from the year total. Simple, I thought.

Yet this one lady gives us hassle.

Every time we call.

She:

“Do you have a repeat prescription for this?”

Me:

“Yes. We have a prescription to cover the year….. etc….” then in my head “It’s in your SYSTEM!!!”

Every time we go in to collect.

She:

“Do you have a repeat prescription for this?”

Me:

“Yes. We have a prescription to cover the year….. etc….”

Then she grudgingly hands it over.

Now I know she has protocols to follow. I know how strict the rules and regulations in the pharmaceutical industry are (I worked in exports to the Middle East and boy, the hoops you need to go through to get that job done!) But no one else at the pharmacy does this. They all know we have a year prescription.

But our daughter has been getting medicine from their for almost 8 years. And still she interrogates us. We have never not had a prescription.

I don’t think it is personal. Although, when you are standing in front of her steely, suspicious gaze in front of an entire pharmacy full of people, and she starts her interrogation, it sure feels personal.

So what kinds of drugs are we talking about here? With a really high street value? You’d think so, but no.

• Sodium chloride (salty water, but special salty water)
• Potassium chloride (different kind of salty water)
• potassium citrate (I don’t know, but it helps her kidneys from turning to stone)
• Nexium (to help with acid reflux.)
• Indomethacin liquid (used in treating eye infections for normal people but it’s the main magic drug for Bartters peeps)
• Vitamin D

So dear lady at the pharmacy, I do’t know why you give me such hassle. I don’t know what you think I am doing with this stuff. I couldn’t administer the lethal injection with the potassium chloride we get (I checked. Say what? Yes I know, it’s freaky. I was curious and wanted to know if we had dangerous quantities in the house and I had some time on my hands).

Dear lady at the pharmacy, please stop. Most days I can shrug it off but we have enough crap to deal with and traumas that we don’t need you to hassle us over something so meaningless.

Go find some other way to exert your power.

Try smiling.