Fuck it

Well it happened again, made a mistake on billing through insurance and she laced into me. I really wanted to throttle her neck, take her down so fast and pin her breathless body on the floor of the pharmacy. She weighs all of 100 pounds and I could have so easily perfected my strangulation skills. But then I would have gotten fired, etc., etc. So instead I said some lame comment about her having no patience. Let them fucking fire me.

This job is bleeding into my days off, which is exactly what I didn't want. As in stiff neck days off, throbbing headache days off, inability to concentrate when I'm at home supposedly relaxing and reading the New York Times or The Zookeepers Wife. Maybe the drug companies are in cahoots, to get all the pharmacists so stressed out as to increase their own bottom line. How many are taking the H2 inhibitors, the proton pump inhibitors, Adderall for God's sake . . . does every pharmacist have to have a fucking bleeding ulcer???

So tired, life is just tough. "I dreamt you died, Marsha," my neighbor says to me on the phone today. What does that mean, I wonder. Are things so bad that people are reading into my bad karma, and coming up with, well, death? Certainly not a positive affirmation of my life. I do try, I really try to put a positive spin on things. But it only goes so far. Eventually I just need a break. And yes, I know there are so many people worse off and in many ways I have no right to complain. But when I walk into work these days, I feel like I'd rather be anywhere else. And once again, it's not the work I mind, it's the people. I just truly believe if I was in a nurturing environment, with laughter and support, it would be a pleasure. Instead my heart pounds from fear of making a mistake, even one so small as forgetting to initial a script. As in the tech initials a script.

Poor baby

So, still have this headache. I'm not a headache person, wouldn't do well with migraines. Vasillating between Advil, Acetaminophen, 12 ounce glasses of water, coffee. And still it radiates down the neck, a pulsating vise around my head. But without nausea and vomiting doesn't look like an aneurism. So on this beautiful day, should step outside and enjoy the day. Only I have a headache!!!

I try and keep my part-time pharmacy job, only two days a week, far, far at bay the other days, so it doesn't bleed into these glorious days off. But like at Acme, it's getting harder to do this. Each month that goes by, each month I'm closer to finishing the internship, it gets more painful to walk in there. And here's the kicker: I actually don't mind the job, I'm not so bad at it either. It's the people. Moody, cold as the frigid temperature there, and like every girl I met at pharmacy school, so fucking conservative.

antibiotic antipathy

A pharmaceutical week from hell. My son had poison ivy with a touch of impetigo and after sampling way too many antibiotics- Keflex, Bactrim, Augmentin- all did nothing (except scare the hell out of me about Stevens Johnson Syndrome, apparently the de rigueur prescription fear of moms, the ER doctor lamented). Wound up at the hospital at 1 AM on a Saturday night, worried sick, nothing working.

Then a few days later, a bad mammography, a call from the doctor's office with an annoyingly nervous secretary telling me something assymetrical showed up on my film. More scans, my heart pounding, visions of never making it to my son's Bar Mitzvah, unless you count on a stretcher.

And now, all is well, his rash is getting better thanks to prednisone. Duh! A mere blood vessel was the assymetry on my breast. The only problem now is this confounding headache that won't go away. Serious pain!!! A brain tumor?

A five minute tirade

Apparently 17% of online viewers have their own blog. In other words, everyone is so busy writing about their own small, solipsistic life, that no one is bothering to read anyone else's. And why should they, it's mostly crap anyway. And if that's not enough stupidity, they then open themselves up to the sadistic comments posted thereafter.

Isn't there laundry to be done? Or maybe read a book, time well spent?

This is the career of bored housewives I'm sure. My hunch is the husbands and kids are looking askance at these self-centered activities. Just think, the dinners would be so much better if ...

Pharmacy still is in the dumps. A bit better last week, slower, thanks to some obscure Jewish holiday, one where the dutiful daughters attend services in the rafters while their husbands get the good seats. I see it all as just more of the same, following the herd. One cow, one sheep at a time.

But not a mistake all day from me in what is now, this fucked-up state of pharmacy. So much better in the 70's when there was a profit margin. When two pharmacists could actually work side by side. Talk. Laugh. Later.

I think I may get fired. Once again, Sisyphus, sliding down the hill. This profession is turning into an unrequited love affair. I mean really, dating was never this hard. I just can't seem to get this goddamn internship moving forward. It does bring out the worst in me, the insecurity, the nervousness. I'm a mess.

And yet, I'm determined to finish it, to finally get that degree. But I keep finding a preceptor who is either moody (now), or an asshole ( Sally). Later.

Tracy

It's been a long time I know. Basically felt it was a waste of time to write in a vacuum, with nary a reader to be found, unless you count my Chinese readers, but seriously, folks, who are these people? But still the need is there, just to write about things, to try and share this experience of, yes, still interning as a pharmacist. Mostly to hold onto some sanity in this god forsaken profession. We'll see how it goes, no promises.

As some of you know the Walblues (Acme pseudonym) internship was a wash. The Board of Pharmacy never counted one lousy hour of the 1000 spent there. 1000 hours of sadistic imprisonment, of total pep talking myself through those sliding glass doors, into that frozen, air conditioned hell hole.

Well, things did get better, for a while. I found a new internship in a smaller independent pharmacy, but as time went on it got, well, sort of claustrophobic in that mom and pop way.

And believe it or not in this teensy store, I still managed to work under a Sally type commandante. Younger than Sally (if you remember, Sally was the amazonian woman from Nigeria), 26, white, a tiny girl, but still a pharmacy manager bitch. So here we are almost 800 hours in, and this Sisyphus intern is still heading to yet another hateful place, under the thumb of yet another autocrat. What's with all these pharmacy managers that don't say hello in the morning. "Hi Tracy." I say. No eye contact, not even a grunt. God help me.