This story was related to me by a colleague:
On a quiet Friday afternoon, I received a long distance phone call from the United States. First thing they did was insist on speaking with my boss, who of course never works Fridays and never has. It took me a bit, but I finally managed to convince them that I was indeed the must qualified and competent person they could speak with at the present time, so they got down to business.
"I need Fentanyl lollipops, dear. How long would it take for you to FedEx them to me?"
There are many reasons why this question would elicit a facepalm. Firstly, Fentanyl is a heavy-duty narcotic. All precriptions for Fentanyl are thoroughly checked out to make sure that the prescription is valid, and that it is compatible with any other medications the patient may be taking.
Secondly, I'd never even heard of them making Fentanyl in lollipop form (it's made in trans-dermal patches and injectables, so I had a funny image of someone licking the patches)- only a Google search confirmed their existence. Therefore, these would have to be made by a pharmacy that specializes in compounding, who would also require copies of the original prescription to be verified. There is only one pharmacy that I knew of that might have been able to make this special medication, but even then I wasn't sure.
Thirdly, this was an American man calling, and even if he had a valid prescription in the States, it wouldn't be valid here.
After I explained all of these points clearly to the man, he tried what he thought would be his trump card: "I'm a personal friend of your boss. He's done this for me in the past. How long have you been working there, anyway? Don't you know who I am?"
A quick computer check proved that the man had never opened a file in our pharmacy, and it would be impossible to have FedExed him this product in the past without some sort of record. Without a valid prescription, there is no way this would have made it past the border.
However, the man kept insisting that our pharmacy, because of my boss being his personal friend, had definitely sent him Fentanyl lollipops in the past. I calmly tried to explain to him that our boss wouldn't do this for his own cousin, let alone an American man with no patient file whatsoever. He grew more irate, and eventually just hung up on me (though in my imagination, he likely slammed down the phone, then did a Google search for another pharmacy he could bug).
This was one of those moments where my coworker's advocacy for drinking on the job seemed entirely reasonable!
On a quiet Friday afternoon, I received a long distance phone call from the United States. First thing they did was insist on speaking with my boss, who of course never works Fridays and never has. It took me a bit, but I finally managed to convince them that I was indeed the must qualified and competent person they could speak with at the present time, so they got down to business.
"I need Fentanyl lollipops, dear. How long would it take for you to FedEx them to me?"
There are many reasons why this question would elicit a facepalm. Firstly, Fentanyl is a heavy-duty narcotic. All precriptions for Fentanyl are thoroughly checked out to make sure that the prescription is valid, and that it is compatible with any other medications the patient may be taking.
Secondly, I'd never even heard of them making Fentanyl in lollipop form (it's made in trans-dermal patches and injectables, so I had a funny image of someone licking the patches)- only a Google search confirmed their existence. Therefore, these would have to be made by a pharmacy that specializes in compounding, who would also require copies of the original prescription to be verified. There is only one pharmacy that I knew of that might have been able to make this special medication, but even then I wasn't sure.
Thirdly, this was an American man calling, and even if he had a valid prescription in the States, it wouldn't be valid here.
After I explained all of these points clearly to the man, he tried what he thought would be his trump card: "I'm a personal friend of your boss. He's done this for me in the past. How long have you been working there, anyway? Don't you know who I am?"
A quick computer check proved that the man had never opened a file in our pharmacy, and it would be impossible to have FedExed him this product in the past without some sort of record. Without a valid prescription, there is no way this would have made it past the border.
However, the man kept insisting that our pharmacy, because of my boss being his personal friend, had definitely sent him Fentanyl lollipops in the past. I calmly tried to explain to him that our boss wouldn't do this for his own cousin, let alone an American man with no patient file whatsoever. He grew more irate, and eventually just hung up on me (though in my imagination, he likely slammed down the phone, then did a Google search for another pharmacy he could bug).
This was one of those moments where my coworker's advocacy for drinking on the job seemed entirely reasonable!
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