Your best doctor is you
I’m not quite ready to indict the entire medical profession. Not quite yet. But some of the events which happened to me recently might make me change my mind.
During my recent stay in a Tucson hospital I was brought my evening meds. I noticed a pill I didn’t recognize, so I asked the nurse. “That’s your Coumaden,” she said.
“I don’t take Coumaden,” I advised her. “Well, it must have been prescribed for you,” she said.
“Would you double-check on this please?” She left my room and I sensed that she thought that she had more important things to do.
Fortunately, I knew that Coumaden is an anticoagulant (blood thinner), and I couldn’t understand why it would have been prescribed for me when I had a four inch wound in the side of my chest that was still draining blood.
She returned and said, “It’s a good thing I checked. The medication package was marked as “Zocor” but what what was dispensed was Coumaden.”
Yeah, it’s a good thing you checked!
September 10th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Darn! If you had just taken one pill it probably wouldn’t have hurt you but, being a lawyer and all, you could have sued the pants off them.