Pharmacy. Jim Plagakis. Pharmacist

If you have not noticed, Evan (web-designer) has managed to get rid of the graphic porno spam. They now are after us with code only and they are self-limiting to two forums on the MESSAGE BOARD. Take the time to look and see what they are spamming about. I clearly marked the forums.

They are still loading us up with links to porno sites. For editorial purposes only, I took a look and the ones I looked at were not for porno. One was a link to a site that told us about the Russian beauties that wanted an American husband. Good for entertainment.

The other dominant subject is drug drugs and more drugs. VICODIN WITHOUT A PRESCRIPTION. I took a look here too. This site did not offer the brand name. They said that they would get it to you overnight. They also offered VIAGRA, CIALIS and LEVITRA. Brand name? Doubtful. This stuff is probably counterfeit. Exactly the same in appearance, but can the purchaser be sure that it is going to be the right drug. You and I know enough to be skeptical, but the average boomer with one that is too soft at the wrong times doesn’t care. He will take a chance if he doesn’t even know that this could be dangerous.

No doctor. No Nurse Practitioner. Just order the stuff and it will be there tomorrow. Other sites said AMBIEN-COSTA RICA. TRAMADOL ON LINE. CHEAP GENERIC VALIUM. SOMASOMASOMA AT THE BEST PRICES.
Best prices, bull shit. If every pharmacist could get the cash prices that these off-shore “pharmacies?” get, we would all own our own drug stores and be plenty rich. Profits ranged from 1000% to 5000%.

Crimson Tide video What gets me is that there is no oversight at all. No doctor, PA, NP or PHARMACIST to guide these buyers in their drug use. They claim to offer some counseling, but that is BS. I called two of the counseling lines. No one answered the first. The second was manned by your typical non-native English speaker. She had a hard time when I said, “Give it to me again” when she gave me an answer on the side effects of Ambien. I asked her if I could expect a full eight hours of sleep and she answered, “A night’s sleep is good. A good night’s sleep. Yes.”

Here is what I think. We know that people with enough money will never have to go to a pain clinic to get their weekly prescriptions for HYDROCODONE, ALPRAZOLAM & CARISOPRODOL. With a click of the mouse and a credit card, they are in business.

My suggestion is that we move the popular off-shore drugs from Schedule III, IV or Rx Only to BTC. Behind The Counter. Make it so that the sale cannot be finalized without the intervention of a pharmacist. Relax! I’m just having fun. Relax all of those SERIOUS muscles.

Hell, you could sell a Watson Labs prepared blisterpack of 30 for $30.00, make $25.00 profit and the patient actually gets professional intervention, just in case.

It is not likely, but the poor bastard could drop dead in flagrante delicto in a compromising postion after his boot-leg, off-shore, hyper-potent counterfeit Viagra killed his ass. Can you imagine:
“Harry, what was that, Harry?”

Silence.

“Harry, what was that? I liked it. Do it again.”

Big time silence.

“Harry… Harry, please roll off me. You are frightening me.”

That’s all of the fun I’m giving you. I would be willing to bet a year’s wages at 10:1 that that exact scenario (perhaps other dialogue) between Harry and his mistress has actually happened.

Anyway, allowing off-shore drug operations to proliferate is a poor second choice when the essential purpose of the FDA is to protect Americans from bad drugs.

Imagine a direct to consumer advertising from us: A damn good-looking middle-aged man and woman dressed up like pharmacists.

The female pharmacist: “Generic Ambien is a good way to get a night’s sleep.”

The male pharmacist: “And it is cheaper than the Internet when you buy it from your American pharmacist. Your savings is one hundred dollars on average.”

The female pharmacist laughing lightly: “That’s right, Tom.” She looks at the camera and points her finger at you. “And you are not going to get a pharmacist to talk to you about side effects and dangers . You get nothing when you order your drugs on the Internet.”

Now, I was just having some fun here. But, think about it. If they could get it from you and cheaper, why get it from some outfit in the Bahamas? Talk to us.

You think you are going to retire someday?

With the Durham-Humphrey Act, pharmacy was transformed from the corner druggist who mixed up doctor’s orders, but also had an open field for handing out just about any drug the druggist wanted. Legend drugs put hand cuffs on the happy druggist and the pharmacist was born into a regulated profession.

The 1950s saw the advent of manufactured tablets and capsules and standardized doses. The pharmacist was the prescription filler. Now, in the 21st Century, we are about to see the end of pharmacists having anything to do with the filling of prescriptions. Think about it.

Take a real good look. Drug stores are popping up on every corner. Every grocery store wants to advertise that there is a pharmacy inside. Wholesale clubs. Discount stores. Where are they going to get the pharmacists? Unless the role of the pharmacist is about to change dramatically. Think about it again.

The pressures on our profession are about to be expanded exponentially. There is no way that there can be a pharmacist in ever dispensary. You will have a large population in total. There will be more children, more young adults, more middle-aged men and women who will be taking a hint from the generation that will change the face of the entire medical system. THE BOOMERS.

You can be sure that this secret has been discussed in board rooms all over the country. This is money!

There are 79 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. That is an unheard of 27% of the population of the United States of America. Older people use more drugs. These older people are from the 1960s. They learned how to say NO and they are screaming NO about getting old.

The BOOMERS are determined to stay youthful, vital, healthy and sexy for the entire ride and Big Pharma is gonna accommodate them. This generation is the most educated ever, the most sophisticated and the richest in history. They want to stay right in the game and they are gonna be willing to pay for it.

Big Pharma is salivating. I’d wager that some of the research money that would be going to treat, heal and cure real diseases will be going to develop medicines to help the BOOMERS with their fantasy of being young. The modern Fountain of Youth. Viagra was the first. Seligiline will be huge. Resveratrol (an ingredient in red wine) will be grabbed by Big Pharma and made Rx Only in the large doses that are necessary. That is just the start. You will see children dying unnecessarily because of the diversion of money and the focus toward the BOOMERS.

And you think it will end some day? Think again. Right now, today, a 64 year old woman has a 41% chance to live to age 90. With advances, she’ll easily live to 95. A married couple in January of 2008, has a 29% chance of one of them making it to 95. Medical advances over the next couple decades will get that widower to age 100 easily. Once medical technology and Big Pharma really focus on keeping the BOOMERS youthful, the wheel will start to turn. It will be for pharmaceuticals what the space program was for miniaturization and technology, the chip revolution.

You think you are gonna take all of that money and retire gracefully. Bullshit, you will be working until you are 85 years old. And you’ll probably take the age-defying drugs that Big Pharma comes up with and thrive. At the very least, they’ll be throwing an obscene amount of money at you just to stand at a counter and oversee the tech check tech dispensing process.

The face of American pharmacy was renovated starting around 1950. The next caterpillar to butterfly transformation is beginning right now.

I have to laugh at myself.

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” … “Once institutionalized, forever institutionalized?”

I love my early morning bicycle rides on Galveston’s wide seawall. I usually ride with Victoria and we go out early enough to see the typically brilliantly colored sunrise. Yesterday was the first day back after a 4 day “norther” had the morning temperatures in the fifties. Victoria slept in and I rode alone.

I had a good ride. I wore short pants and a long sleeve tee-shirt. Scant armor for an unexpected fall. Fall, I did. Crossing over from a lower level (3/4 inch) to a higher, my front tire did not grab and I went down in a heap. I badly scraped my left knee and had bloody scrapes on 5 other body parts, including my upper lip moustache area.

The most distressing thing was that I know better. I was merrily riding along, breathing in the salt air, looking at the lavender sunrise when I had to go around a van that had parked cock-eyed. I was not watching the “road” or I would have noticed the change in levels and had not have been so careless. I WAS ASLEEP.

The chain came loose and I COULD NOT RIDE THE BIKE HOME. I was rattled. Using my cell phone, I woke Victoria up and asked her to come after me. I took a long shower, cleaned all of the offending bloody areas with Phisohex. Dried the areas with a blow drier and painted them liberally with Betadine Solution. My left knee was now “hematomaed” to the size of a pear. It took 4 jumbo bandages to cover it. A 5 inch long scrape.

I could not bend the knee without considerable pain. 45 minutes later, I reported to Mainland Pharmacy for a 5 hour Saturday shift. What? Why are you looking at me like that? What is that look? I am a pharmacist. Pharmacists work hurt, don’t they? What an institutionalized Bozo, I am.

The owner is not available to work. PERIOD! That story will not be told today. My partner, the other part time pharmacist, had a long planned family thing with her children. I was not going to mess that up for her.

I just told the tech and the cashier, “I am on the stool all day. Bring everything to me.” They did. They actually babied my ass big time. When I got up, “Jim, sit down.” My biggest problem was the HCTZ I took before my ride. I had to trek to the men’s room every hour… about 10 miles away. I am very pain tolerant, but this baby hurt.

Now, you say, JIM, YOU ARE 66 YEARS OLD. YOU HAD AN ACCIDENT THAT WOULD HAVE MOST SENIOR CITIZENS AT THE URGENT CARE CLINIC. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

I know. I know, you guys. I am a hopeless case. I will always be institutionalized. Do as I say, don’t do as I do. Never do this. You are a frikkin’ professional. Pay attention. But, man, how do you call Diana and say, “Sorry, Diana, I am gonna mess up your plans because I bumped my knee.” I couldn’t do it.

PHARMACISTS WORK HURT AND PHARMACISTS WORK SICK. My standard joke when patients ask why I am working sick is, “WHEN A PHARMACIST HAS GANGRENE, THEN SHE CAN TAKE THE DAY OFF.” Yuck, Yuck, Yuck.

Pathetic! I am pitiable. What a wretch, I am. I have been a standard bearer for the working condition rights of pharmacists and what do I do. I stayed at work with a left knee that was seeping bloody exudate so profusely that my pants leg was soaking wet. What the fuck, I only had 2 hours left to go.

Talk to me. Are you still closet institutionalized Bozos or have you made a break for the finish line and just call in sick like the attorney does?

I will NEVER give up my morning bike rides. I love them. They are an invigorating start to my days. Riding beside the Gulf of Mexico is spectacular. I will probably never give up being a Bozo either. I am paying today. Sunday.
I AM 66 years old and I really hurt this morning… all over. Time for a session in the Jacuzzi tub.

UPDATE 1/11/08. It is 6 days out from the crash and I hurt all over. I worked 10 hours yesterday. Much of it on a stool. My left leg, from knee down, ended up swollen. It is down this morning but I have to look forward to
another 10 hours. I am very clear now that I am 66 years old and that I am a long way out from 36 or 46 or 56.
It is going to take awhile for me to heal from this one. I’m going to the Jacuzzi tub now. 6:45 AM. I never take baths and have started the last 6 days in that tub. I CANNOT ANSWER MY BOZO QUESTION. THIS SEEMS NATURAL AND NORMAL TO ME. WORKING ON A STOOL, HAVING THE TECHS BRINGING ME MY WORK. Is there hope for us?

Further Update. I got into the tub and took a good look at my knee. The scab was hard and yellow. I can’t recall ever seeing one like that so I got a wash cloth and some Phisohex and started working on it. 30 minutes later, I had reduced the scab by 1/3rd. Nice pink skin underneath. I’ll be at it again in the morning. A hospice nurse told me that I had done the right thing. Hurt? Hell yes it hurt. As Lawrence of Arabia said, “The secret is not minding that it hurts.”