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A day in the life of a pharmacist

Most of the time I enjoy my job, but after days like today I wonder why I do it. I had to deal with more rude, ignorant people today in my 9 hours at work than I've had to in an entire month. I am amazed sometimes at the large number of people who don't know anything about their own insurance - that they themselves willing sign up for and pay for. . .they don't know that they have a $500 deductible before those $5 copays start showing up and so on.

Here are is a glimpse into my day . . .

Person 1) Her medicine costs $75 on her insurance, she is irate that we are charging her more than $50. We have a paid claim from her insurance, and the insurance wants her to pay $75, but she says her copay is never supposed to be more than $50. I tell that I'll be happy to call her insurance, or switch her to the generic, but she won't have that. She transfers her Rx to a competitor across the street, and I wish that pharmacist good luck. Her copay is still going to be $75.

Person 2) Man comes to drive-thru and and asks for 1/2 dozen colchine (prescription gout med). He's got no record of that med at any Walgreens in the country, so I refill a different Rx he has that is also for gout. He buys it, but he still wants 1/2 dozen colchine. I ask him if he's sure he got it filled at Walgreens, and he says "yeah, about 4 years ago." Well, I have no record of that because our records in the pharmacy only back about 2 years, and even if I did have the Rx, it would be expired! I suggest that he go to an after hours medical clinic (which we have a number of here) or the emergency room because I cannot just hand out prescription medications without a prescription. He yells at me and says "You want me to spend $300 at the ER just so I can get a prescription!!!!!!!!!!!" There is nothing I can do. He revs up his truck and speeds off.

Person 3) Female calls pharmacy and wants to know if you can get Xanax or Methadone in your system just by touching the pills. I say no. She then wants wants to know if you can get those meds in your system by kissing someone that has just taken them. I say no, you can only get a noticable about of those meds in your system if you swallow them. That's a city employee on her way into a drug test I bet.

Person 4) Walmart calls needing to transfer 3 of our prescriptions to their pharmacy. I give them the info, and hang up when finished. Walmart call me back a few minutes later and tells me that the person is mad and decided not to get their prescriptions filled there, so I have to re-activate them. About an hour later, I get a call from a different competitor, wanting the same prescriptions transferred. Make up your mind!

Person 5) A very country man comes in and says that we should've had his prescription phoned in from "the Walgreens in Mississippi for his shot he takes for his kidneys" I have no idea what he's talking about and neither do my assistants. He doesn't know that name of the medicine, but he says it starts with a "C". I search through his records for a med that starts with a "C" that could possible be for his kidneys. Nothing. I ask him if he's sure he's at the right store, because there are 15 Walgreens in town. He's not sure. He decides he better call the Walgreens in MS. Turns out that the medicine starts with a "P", and we don't even have it. So, I try to explain to him where the next closest store is and he says "Is that on the way to the FEMA yard?" FEMA yard. I guess he means a FEMA trailer park, but none the less, the store is no where near it.

In between all that I computer problems and a large warehouse delivery of meds to put away. It days like this I just want to go home, change into my pajamas and spend the evening on the porch swing sipping margaritas.

Happy Valentine's Day

Finished Project

I finally finished my quilt that I started in January. My parents and grandmother gave me a gift certificate to Hobby Lobby last Jan. for my birthday, and I used it to buy fabric for my quilt.

I cut and pieced it myself, but I took it to a local shop to have it quilted. I spent yesterday and this evening putting the binding on, which is a tedious task because it has to be sewn on by hand if you don't want your stitches to show.

It is quilted with mint green thread, and the backing is pieced with three different shades of green cotton fabric. The dog shapes are appliqued on, and there are 20 of them. I used 2 different kinds of black fabric, but you can't tell that from the picture.

LIly's Mess

I had work from 2-10 pm last Friday night. After I got off, James and I met at a local restraunt called "Chimes" for dinner. We got home about 11:30 to find this messon our front porch. The dogs were left outside for about and hour and a half, and Lily busied herself with her neverending project of digging up our flower beds. This time she decided to explore some uncharted territory, and dig in our Kumquat tree in addition to the flower bed.

My Contribution to Thanksgiving Dinner

This year we spent Thanksgiving day with James' family, and this was the first year that I cooked anything for the dinner. I made pumkin cake for dessert. I used a special pan to make the large pumpkin,and the little ones were made from a mini-bundt pan. I iced them with homemade cream cheese icing. The stems are mini-Twix bars.

Dogs and Pumpkins

Lily perched up in the patio chair quite happily.
If a dog can experience embarrasment, Lily did after we tied her bandana around her head as if she was a peasant.
This pisture was taken an Louisiana Tech across the street from the recently rebuilt Hale Hall. We went up for homecoming and had a great time reconnecting with some old friends that we hadn't seen in way too long!

These two pictures were taken in the same place, but I couldn't get them to pose together. These were taken outside of James' parents' house.

Fall Fun

Saturday morning James and I, along with the doggies, went to the Cajan Country Corn Maze in Port Allen, LA. It was about a 20 minutes drive from our house. It was the first time either of us had been to a corn maze. We had nice sunny weather for the morning, which I was happy about because it had rained just about every day of the week. Daisy loved her walk though the maze, but Lily was a bit scared of the other people the whole time. It took us about an hour to make our way through it.

Currently Reading. . .

We just started attending a new Sunday School class at our church. We're discussing biblical answers to common troubles of life. One topic we'll be discussing is the problem of pain. Which made me get C.S. Lewis' book by that title off the shelf. I read the book about 7 years ago. It's been good to pick it up again. Lewis is not always an easy read, and this book is the most difficult of his that I've read so far.

Lewis doesn't pretend to be a theologian and he wasn't reformed. He was a member of the Church of England. He was a literature prof in England, and he was also a great Christian thinker. I don't agree with everything in his books, for example he has an interesting view of creation before the fall. I think he writes about it in this book, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

But with the disclaimer out of the way, I really like The Problem of Pain. Here's a quote for you:

"God is both further from us, and neared to us, than any other being. . .He (God) makes, we are made: He is original, we derivative. But at the same time, and for the same reason, the intimacy between God and even the meanest creature is closer than any that creatures can attain with one another. Our life is, at every moment, supplied by Him: our tiny, miraculous power of free will only operates on bodies which His continual energy keeps in existence - our very power to think is His power communicated to us."

At first it seems that statement doesn't make sense. We know how close we are to our spouse, parents, and families. How can the relationship between God and a murderer possibly surpass those familial relationships that mean so much to us. Well, wish was we may, we can't sustain the life of our spouse, but it is God who sustains the life of the vilest criminal. It is but His grace alone that I am not the criminal.

Finished Project

Our friend Brian just graduated from LSU with his PhD in math. He and his wife are moving to Texas soon, so we gave them a little going away present.

I pieced the quilt myself, but I took to a shop to have it quilted. I don't have a quilting machine, and I also don't have the patience to hand quilt :-)

I picked one of James' math books at random to aid in choosing symbols to put on it. He saw me with it, and asked "What are you, of all people, doing with my Real Analysis book." I really don't like math. James and I met because he was my math tutor in college. Poor guy. He thought he was getting a freshman through college algebra, but it turned into getting his fiancee through Calculus.





I used tiger stripe fabric for the back of the quilt. James is already asking for his own quilt with a circuit on it :-)


Geaux Tigers!

Weekend Away

We're going to DC this weekend for our dear friend Julie's wedding. I'm really excited. It's going to be a mini reunion. I haven't seen her since my wedding 5 years ago. Too long. I'm in the midst of packing. I'm trying to fit everything I need for the weekend in my backpack. I'm really paranoid about checking luggage at the airport. I'm afraid it will get end get to Tahiti or something and I'll never see it again. So far I have all my clothes for the trip in the backpack, with room to spare. . .

Oh, Lily!

We have 2 very spoiled dogs. This is a picture of them in our courtyard. And no, we didn't put the dog on the table - she loves to jump up there. They both sleep in the bedroom with us at night, and sometimes our little dog (Lily) gets the priviledge of sleeping on the bed with us. They are usually very good at letting us know when they need to go out in the morning, but not this morning. I stepped out of the bed onto wet carpet. I am half blind without my glasses, so I couldn't see what it was but I assumed that Lily had an accident. James quickly got out of bed to survey the damage while I rummaged around for my glasses. Well, she did not have just a minor little accident. She had dribbled all over the bedroom - including underneth the bed! It took us about 30 minutes to clean it up.

She is a really fun pet, but she has been a little bad lately. In the past month or so she's thrown up on our bed, peed in the house twice, chewed up a pair of my shoes, and chewed on the carpet.

A New Job

On June 13th I found out that the Albertsons pharmacy that I had been working at was going to permanently close "on or before June 23, 2006." I had only 3 days to decide if I wanted to stay with Albertsons as a relief pharmacist or take the severance package and find a new job. I had to let my district manager know if I wanted to stay with the company be June 19th.

It was a fairly easy decision to leave. I had not been happy with the company. Over the course of 1 year my check had been wrong 10 times, and I don't think the company is going to be around much longer any way. I didn't even want to contribute to their 401K plan because I felt that I'd be throwing money down the toilet be purchasing Albertsons stock! I contacted several of the large chain pharmacies, and the day after I heard the news, I had an interview with Walgreens. I was offered a job on the spot as a floater with no weekends. . .and I was offered $3/hr more than what I had been making. That was too good to pass up.

The Albertsons pharmacy closed on June 20th. Monday was my first day with Walgreens, and things are going very smoothly so far. This has turned out to be a real blessing. We had been praying for several months for a job situation for me that would allow me to go to church more often, and we're going to be able to use some of the money from the severance package to pay off some student loan debt. God is so good.

Our 5th anniversary

Yesterday was our 5th anniversary. We exchanged gifts and then we went out to eat in New Orleans at Antoine's. http://www.antoines.com/ I had been wanting to go there for a long time, but James never have nice enough clothes with him when we were in town. The restaraunt has been around since 1840, and it was the first restaurant to serve Oysters Rockefeller, Crawfish Etouffee, and Shrimp Remoulade. The service was outstanding and the food was wonderful. The whole menu was ala carte, so you ordered your entree, salad, and side items separately. James had the rack of lamb and I had their filet minion. We shared an order of Pommes de terre soufflées (fried puffed potatoes) They were so good. We shared the Baked Alaska for dessert, which was a layered dish of ice cream, whipped cream, and cake.


I gave James a signed photo of Stan Musial - he played for the Cardnials in the 1940-60's. James is a Cardnial's fan. We've been to St. Louis twice for ballgames. He really was surprised about his present. I found the picture at an antique shop in Denham Springs, LA. We also bought a new buffet for our dining droom there. The traditional gift for 5th anniversary is wood, so that counts.




I had no idea what he had gotten for me. He surprised me with Adobe Photoshop elements. I had asked for it at Christmas, but our OS on our old computer was too dated to run it. I'm going to love it!

Our First Crawfish Boil

James I just hosted our first crawfish boil at our house this past Saturday. We bought a large 80 qt. crawfish boiler with our tax refund this year. The food was great and the weather cooperated with us. We had 8 guests and 60 lbs of crawfish and corn, pototoes, and sausage. James did the most of the work in preparing the food, so I'll let him tell you about it in his own post. The crawfish came (LIVE) in a mesh sack. We got them from a local seafood market. Our puppy didn't know what to think of them. A few of them tried to crawl away from us before they got dumped in the water. One of them bit James - that mudbug wasn't doing down without a fight! The seafood market (City Cafe) also tossed in some "extras". . .James found a small whole catfish in the sack with the crawfish. We threw that away. YUCK. Lily (the pup) had a feast of her own. She ate some corn right off the cob.

I finally feel like an official Louisiana resident now that I've learned a bit about how to cook crawfish! We've been here a year, and this kinda feels like home, but not really. I do miss Arkansas. I miss the weather! South Louisiana is the sauna of the contienent. I prefer snow and ice storms and the occasional tornado to hurricanes. It is so hot and sticky here. All you folks in Arkansas who say "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" when complaining about the summer weather don't know about humidity. Arkansas seems soooo arid to me now. It didn't get really cold during the "winter" last year at all. There was only one day when I got my coat out of the closet. It just didn't feel like Christmas. . .not that I love cold weather. . .I don't. I would love for it to be freezing for 3 weeks in December though, and then night after new years I'd love to have the spring flowers start blooming. . .which is what happened here minus the 3 weeks of cold weather in December. Another odd thing about the weather is that it rains almost every afternoon in the summer - which really stinks if your'e outside in the middle of mowing or some other kind of yard work and you just have to quit and abandon all your equipment because it has gone from being completely clear and sunny to a torrential rain in less than 2 1/2 minutes.

Is this church?

Last night I was channel surfing and came across Jimmy Swaggart preaching. . .that's if you want to call what he was doing preaching. Until James and I moved to Red Stick, I thought ol' Jimmy had stepped out of the ministry. The last memory I had of him was his tearful apology on TV for solitation of a hooker. Well, he's alive and kickin' here in Baton Rouge. He has a large compound in a nice part of town, and he has a large congregation here. . although I can't figure out what is so appealing about it. Last night on TV, he was "preaching" from an obsure verse out of II Chronicles . . .as is fashionable these days - i.e. prayer of Jabez - talk about a whole lot of nothing. A verse taken out of context, and then book about how to pray in order to get the most blessing out of God. Sounds kinda like "this is how to pray in order to manipulate God into giving your whatever the heck you want. What happened to "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever". We are here to glorify God. He is not here to glorify us. We had a copy of that book & I wanted to throw it out. That's all it good for.

This was Swaggarts' text:
II Chronicles 20:19
"The Levites, from the sons of the Kohathites and of the sons of the Korahites, stood up to praise the LORD God of Israel, with a very loud voice." (New American Standard Bible)

Simple verse. . .just says a group of people were praising God. This is what was going on when I began watching: A woman is waving her hands in air & running laps around the santuary. Jimmy is sitting in a chair on center stage chanting "hallelujah" over and over. Then he reads his text, and says "I want this church to be a shoutin' church!" Then the band starts playing and everyone is jumping and shouting and waving their hands. The whole thing was just riduculous. I know people worship differently, so my big complaint is not about that. It's about the fact that Jimmy didn't teach anything. . .he had the opportinity to reach thousands of households across South LA and he really didn' t do anything with it. He could have talked about why the people were praising God, what God had just done for them, or how God is faithful to His people. But no, all he says is "I want this church to be a shoutin' church." There is no substance to that. I've heard 3 year olds at church say more spiritually profound things than that.

It is sad that there are so many mindless displays of Christianity. You turn on Christian radio and odds are, you hear a repetitive praise and worship chorus with only six words over and over and over. . .or just some stupid song like "Jesus for Prime Minister.". . .or some upbeat song that is all happy and feel good and it's just so fun to be a Christian - emotional high - why don't you hear songs that talk about life when it's not so fun to be a Christain? What about those old hymns that talk of worship when life is tough and you are suffering, like "It is Well with my Soul." That song what written by a man who had lost his family in a terrible tradegy, and found God to be faithful throughout his suffering. That is a song that can teach you something, but I guess it's not upbeat enough to make on the air on "Positive and Encouraging" K-LOV. (K-LOV is not terrible, but it could be better.) I am thankful that I have been blessed with the opportinity to sit under Godly teaching since my days at LA Tech and then in Little Rock at BCLR. Thank you to the men who have not bought into the lie that you can't preach anything of substance because it's not "seeker sensitive" or because your congregation is just too stupid to understand theology. Thank you to the music ministers who believe there's more to worship than running around the church with your shoes off and shouting and chanting repetitive chorous over and over.

God is real and powerful, and the bible is so rich. Why are there so many "ministers" who don't take advantage of that?

Weekend Warriors

James & I spent the past weekend installing a walkway in our yard. I had Friday-Monday off, and James helped in between doing homework. The walkway goes from the courtyard in the front of the house to the back patio. It is 56 ft long and 2 ft wide. Between us and the doggies we had worn out the grass from walking back and forth from the front yard to the back. There was also a low area that held water. We had tried to fill it in with sand, but Daisy thought it was her own personal sandbox and would play in it every day - which only made the hole worse. It had become a mudpuddle - and the dogs didn't mind that. It was a new way for them to get dirty while outside. Everytime they came inside they would leave a track of little muddy paw prints.

I began working on the project on Friday morning. I went to Home Depot to get the pavers. I'd measured the area, and we needed about 128 paving bricks. We were using red and tan, so we needed 64 of each color. Neither of us have a truck, and I didn't want to pay for delivery, so I decided to make a couple of trips in my car. I loaded up 64 pavers on a cart at HD, and had someone load them in the trunk of the car. I knew they were heavy, but figured they weighed about 10 lbs each. I got home and got them unloaded and then went back for the rest. Someone loaded these for me too. I unloaded about 1/2 of them when I got home. When James got home that night he couldn't believe how low the car was still sitting. He told me the pavers weighed 20 lbs each, and that I had put 1280 lbs in the truck - twice. That's not too good for the car, but it didn't do any damage.

Saturday morning we began excavating where the walkway would go. We got most of the digging done that day. Sunday afternoon we finished up digging and laid a fabric weed barrier. Next we needed to put in a layer of sand to help level the surface out. We had purchased 12 small bags of sand, and we quickly found out we needed a lot more. We ended up using 18 additional bags and two 70 lb sacks of sand. James helped me get most of the pavers laid, but he left about 6:30 for a class at church. I worked for another hour, and got the rest laid. I might mention that it was COLD all weekend - so I took a hot bath when I got in and tried to turn on our gas log fireplace, but I couldn't remember how, and I was too scared of it to mess with it much, so that just had to wait for James to get back.

I worked on finishing it up on Monday while James was at school. I planted 10 Japanese Boxglove shrubs, and leveled the walkway off. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It's supposed to rain this weekend, so I'm anxious to see if our drainage problem has been corrected.

The questions I get asked . . .

Sometimes I get asked some funny questions at work. A few weeks ago an elderly black lady came into the pharmacy with a question about a glucometer (a machine to check you blood sugar level at home). She was very nice. She wanted to know if we sold the gluocometer that BB King advertises. She didn't know the name of the glucometer, she just knew that she wanted the one that BB King advertised. Well, I didn't know which one that was. I had seen the commercial, but I wasn't sure which one it was. We keep 6 or 7 different glucometers in stock, and I could've talked to her about any of those, but none of those would do unless she was sure that it was the one from the commercial.

Lily's attempt at gardening

I had Monday and Tuesday off this week, and I spent most of my time working in our backyard. When we moved in there was nothing planted there besides grass. We've put in a flower bed and planted 9 azaleas, 2 dwarf gardenias, and 3 Bradford pear trees. I used ornamental grass as edging in the flower bed. The day after I had planted the ornamental grass, I caught Lily digging it up. She's learned not to dig in the flowerbeds in our courtyard, but I guess she thought it was OK to dig in the new bed.

Life with Lily

Our new puppy had been a lot of fun. She's almost 6 months old now. She has learned to "sit" and "lay down." Daisy was mad for about a week after we brought her home, but she loves her now that she has learned that she & Lily can get into all sorts of mischief together. They play together very well.

Daisy was the whole reason we wanted another dog. She would get so lonely when we left her by herself. She needed a playmate. So guess Lily is really Daisy's pet if you think about it.

Since they are both at least partly the same breed they have similar personalities. They are both energetic, but easily scared. For example, one night James tapped on the wall - an attempt to get Daisy to bark. Well, it definitely got Daisy to bark, which scared Lily causing her to run and lose complete control of her bladder - which left us a mess at least 25 feet long to clean up.

Lily loves to play in the water. She will stick her whole head in her water bowl. Perhaps Waterlily would have been a more appropriate name for her.

The move to Red Stick

Our advise on moving. . .hire someone else to do it for you. This was the forth time James and I had moved since we got married, so you'd think we'd be pros at it by now. Not so. The problem began when the UHAUL was not big enough. We had to leave a lot of things behind. We had the UHAUL full, the cab of the UHAUL full, my car full, James' car full, my mom's car full, James' mom's car full, and and 20 year old pick-up truck that leaked every kind of fluid that it could possible leak full. . .and we still couldn't fit everything. We had given a number of things away too, including two beds, a dresser, a recliner, and a desk.

The caravan mentioned above headed down to Baton Rouge. I drove my car, with the two dogs and what ever else I could cram in it - including a coffee table. James drove the UHAUL, and my poor dad drove the 20 year old leaking pickup. . .with no AC, and a window stuck in the up position. I was the first to arrive at the house, and I found that one of the windows had been broken and the water in the bath tub was running full blast. I called the police, but it didn't accomplish much.

James didn't move in for good for over a month. He kept his job in Arkansas while we waited for me to get my license. In that period of time, he drove the old pick-up and brought more of our things down to the new house each weekend.

All in all, the whole experience was a headache.

Cruise

We left out of Galveston, TX the day after graduation. We'd never been to Galveston before, so we took some time to look around town before boarding the ship. We spent a couple of hours looking around in the historic Strand district, which sadly suffered severe fire damage due to hurricane Rita.

Our first stop on the trip was Progresso, Mexico where we had the opportunity to visit Myan ruins. We climbed to the top of the pyramid pictured here.

The next stop was Cozemel. We didn't book any excursions there, we just spent the day shopping.

The last stop, which was our favorite, was Belize. We went snorkeling in two different places. First, we went to a magnificent barrier reef and then we got to go to an area where we could swim with stingrays. The stingray were amazing to watch. . .They were so graceful, but dangerous if you got too close.

Graduation

Well, we're finally getting around to updating you on what's happened in our lives since May. I graduated from UAMS on May 21. It was a long awaited (and fun) day for me. We had a lot of our family come to visit and share the day with us. The 21st was also James' grandmothers' birthday, so we had a casual birthday party for her before we headed off to graduation.

James had a couple of suprises up his sleve for me that day. First, he reserved a limo to drive us to graduation. It was the first time I'd gotten to ride in one. I was glad we had it because we were running late for the ceremory and the driver knew a shortcut that got us there in time.

The next surprise was dinner at Gaucho's after graduation. Gaucho's is one of our favorite restraunts in Little Rock. If you live in Little Rock, you've got to try it. We had a great time with our family and friends that evening.

The last surprise James had for me was a cruise to Cozemel, Progreso Mexico, and Belize. . .more later on the cruise.