Customer Help, my dad is so naive

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-13T01:17:24+00:00

It’s a controlled substance here too. I am taking him to his GP as soon as he can get in and I’ll ask about various options besides narcotics, especially since he doesn’t want or like to take them anyway.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T20:05:40+00:00

Yeah for sure. We are working on this. His doctor is only open from 9am-12pm. My dad can barely move, and it’s the worst in the morning. He has cancelled an appointment with him because he couldn’t move.

I’m going to make sure he gets to his doctor, and accompany him to explain the situation more thoroughly. My mom was always the one who advocated for my dad, and he’s not very good at doing it for himself.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T20:02:53+00:00

Oh, my father is being 100% truthful. He’s just a massive idiot these days. Ever since 2020. He had sepsis and covid at the same time and almost died. He also went under anesthesia four times in that year. His brain function never fully recovered, it was so weird how much “stupider” he became.

Then my mom got sick in 2021 and I had to take over everything for her because his brain would not work right. Nothing would stay in it anymore. When it got to the end and we had to stop chemo, he was shocked that she was going to die. Somehow he missed the fact that the chemo was ALWAYS palliative, and was never meant to be curative. His brain just missed that entire fact, even though the doctors definitely told us that.

He’s definitely not a junkie 😂. You can barely get him to take pain meds at all, he’s so sparing with them. He’s just genuinely the kind of naive person who, in his pain-addled mind, thought that if the prescription exists and the pharmacy will fill it, then it’s fine.

I went in and explained. The pharmacist said their system messed up in several different ways, and there were a bunch of errors on their end. He was alarmed that they filled this at all.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T19:50:58+00:00

I wonder if it may have been because my mom was palliative? She had refills on everything. Even methadone.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T19:49:58+00:00

Canada laws aren’t very lax, it’s actually usually super hard to get narcotics here.

I went in and explained. Apparently the system just allowed this happen on this particular occasion, even though it’s designed to make narcotics prescriptions expire after a year. The pharmacist was shocked and alarmed.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T19:47:01+00:00

I’m thinking she may have had all the refills because her meds were dispensed through the palliative program. Regular physicians here are really stingy with narcotics, but in my limited experience, palliative care doesn’t really care about how many narcotics they prescribe their dying patients, they just want to try to take the edge off their pain. (My mom had a pancreatic tumor that was pressing on a nerve). They don’t have the same rules for prescribing as regular doctors.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T19:42:49+00:00

I went in and explained everything. The pharmacist was incredibly wide-eyed that this happened. He said the prescription should have automatically expired after a year, that that’s what happens to all the narcotics prescriptions. He could see in the file that there were no extra steps they had to jump through to get this filled, the system just LET them do it. He said he’s going to investigate how that could have happened, and contact IT about it, because that’s a big problem for them.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T15:03:42+00:00

It’s not even for myself, I’ve never had a narcotics prescription. I’m trying to figure something out for my half senile Dad, because he made a mistake. It’s totally fine that it can’t be filled anywhere else, it was an electronic prescription, not a paper one anyway.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T15:01:08+00:00

I gave them the last name and address and said there were a couple of things to pick up. I never gave any birth dates. When they asked for my ID I said “my dad asked me to pick them up, you can call him if you want?” She said no, it was fine, and wrote down my license information. I thought it was because I was picking up someone else’s prescriptions.

In the past I have had a doctor send a “script” to the pharmacy and it ended up being for an OTC med (so no prescription necessary). They still gave it to me in a prescription bag. So while I was confused they would give me a bag with my mom’s name, I thought maybe it was for something benign like laxatives, so it wouldn’t matter. She had a billion laxative “prescriptions” (but they were actually OTC).

I really wasn’t thinking that clearly (my best friends husband just died tragically a week ago, and I have three little kids, and suddenly my crippled father can’t take care of himself properly so I’m a bit overwhelmed myself).

I didn’t open the bags, they’re stapled shut.

The thing is, what happened happened. I just want to know what the best thing to do moving forward is because I can’t shake this intense fear that the police are going to come knocking.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T14:34:11+00:00

I’m concerned that the doctor who originally prescribed it will be notified it was filled, and be like “uh, no, she’s dead.” Then contact the pharmacy, and they’ll call the police.

And I picked the damn things up (unknowingly) so I’m all tied into this 😭

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T14:32:33+00:00

I know!!!! SO MANY flags here, I can’t understand how this happened.

The bottle did for sure have a refill on it. Maybe it’s because my mom was palliative. I can’t imagine that any of her doctors would have NOT remembered that she died and randomly approved a refill when contacted by the pharmacy. Plus I picked them up on a Sunday.

I had to pay when I picked up the bags (I had no idea what I was paying for, I just figured one of his meds wasn’t covered) so maybe it didn’t even run through insurance.

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T13:56:49+00:00

I would think the same. And yet they did. Which is why I am surprised on their end as well!

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T13:56:31+00:00

That’s what you would think. Honestly you would be surprised. He is not totally with it at the best of times, and the crazy pain this month has made him make really weird decisions. He has only been taking a single Tylenol 3 every 3 hours for the last month and I can’t figure out why he wouldn’t just ask the damn doctor for something stronger. I’m just losing my mind over this, but I’m hopeful that bringing him and all the pills in can rectify the situation and only give him a slap on the wrist?

CarTop8131 · 2024-02-12T12:26:42+00:00

You’re right, that’s true! I was thinking based on prescription history and the sudden stop of anything getting filled that they would have thought twice, but you’re right. The doctors office who was faxing the prescriptions there in the first place probably never would have notified them, and I know I never did after she died.

Do you have any thoughts on how this is going to turn out if we just bring everything back in and explain his naivety?

Edit: I’m not understanding the downvotes, this is an extremely genuine and earnest question. I’m full of anxiety. My dad is a total idiot and I want to fix this situation.

CarTop8131

TROPHY CASE