OTC Treatment

OTC treatment

My closest competitor in my medical practice is a pharmacy down the road.(I have my own pharmacy). He failed his 12^th standard but that does not prevent him from being an expert in the diagnosis and treatment of all diseases.

One day a  boy came in for his 16 year booster. His  mother accompanied him.

“Do you know why I don’t come to you for treatment?” she said.

“No.” I replied. I must admit I was curious. Her three children came to me for immunizations but nothing else.

“Well she said, ”it takes too long and it is expensive. I have to wait for the consultation, you insist on talking about diet, exercise and follow up visits---.” She seemed to think my interest in preventive health and lifestyle changes was not to be commended but deplored!

“Where do you go?” I asked.

“Nowhere. I just send my son to the pharmacy with my complaint written on a piece of paper and he sends me tablets.  I have been doing this for years.”

A few days later she developed an acute pain in the shoulder. The son was dispatched to the pharmacy. He was given some tablets which he then administered to the mother. Within an hour she started to swell up. Her son described it graphically.

“She looked like I was pumping air into her with my cycle pump. Her lips became even bigger than Angelina Jolie.  Then she started to itch and scratch.”

Her son ran back to the pharmacy with the medicine.

“Look,” he said, ”my mother is swelling up.”

“Let me see the tablets,” said the pharmacist.

He grabbed the tablets and pushed them into a crevice.

“Give your mother these.”

He handed over four tablets. The boy cycled home.

“How is she supposed to take these,” asked the father ,”one at a time or all together?”

They tried calling the pharmacy but the phone was “unreachable.’’

The son cycled back. The shop was locked.  In the distance he could see the pharmacist racing away on his motor bike.

 Meanwhile the mother was finding breathing difficult. Strange noises came from her throat. Her breathing was laborious and difficult.

The neighbours trooped in, and, after a lengthy consensus, they loaded her in an auto and took her to a hospital.  She was immediately rushed into the ICU. She collapsed and went into cardiac arrest at the doorway of the ICU. They managed to resuscitate her , but they kept her in hospital for ten days. The bill was huge!

They tried speaking to the pharmacist but he denied everything. All the transactions were unbilled in any case. He even pretended not to recognize the lady and her son.