I lost my pain medicine prescriptions, yep the heavy duty ones and NO I'm not doing a Rush
Limbaugh!!
The temporary doc I have(mine's out on maternity leave) gave me my prescription a month in advance...All well and good. I had it this last Wed. since I went grocery shopping and considered turning them in then. I decided to hold off since they couldn't be filled until Saturday anyway....That was the last time I saw them (Wed). I know I put them in a really "safe" place so that I wouldn't lose them. I did the same thing a couple months ago with my IRS($2,000)check that I planned to use when I went to my H.S. reunion...Gone..I found it 3 days after my true H.S. reunion so I went to a different reunion a month later . It was OK...
OK, to get to the heart of the matter...Since I will go thru withdrawals going cold turkey I went to the ER..Cost $100....Got some pain medicine to get me thru the night. Refill for 4 pills of Oxycontin(they don't make generic anymore)$35 + $10 for 10 percocets. Cost of seeing the doc for new refills...$15, cost for full prescription of Oxycontin $35 + $ 10 for the percocet.
This mistake, by the time I get done with all of it will probably figure to about $200, when I add in gas, let alone my time...
The worst part is that my doc's office has very strict rules regarding this type medication and they can actually cancel me out of the medication completely....
The price of being stupid.....Endless!
The worst thing about this is I'll probably find the darn prescriptions later this week or something!!
God help me when I'm stuck on stupid!!!
Julie

Julie,
Don't be too hard on yourself, it doesn't help anything. You obviously have stress and worries which makes everything harder. I'm the type of person who has never missed an assignment and never late to be somewhere, just never forgot ANYTHING. Ever since the last 4 years of UC issues and 9 surgeries, I've found myself making more mistakes than ever. I think the mind can only handle so much. I've also misplaced important papers, been late mailing payments, and always seem to run a little late now. It's getting better, and I've just learned that I have to anticipate my future mistakes. It sucks that you have to spend the extra money, but these things happens, try not to dwell on it. We've all been there, and we've all kicked ourselves in the butt too.
Hope things get better soon for you,

A couple of years ago, I travelled to Canada for vacation, by car. I have relatives that live up that way. I drove back to the USA through the border with New York. Just after I went through the border and arrived in Plattsburgh, NY, I stopped to take my meds and realized I had left all of my medications in the bathroom of my hotel room in Montreal, QC. I immediately turned around, and drove back to Canada on I-87 (it was an hour drive back from the point where I realized I had forgotten the meds).

When I got back to the Canadian border, I told them exactly what meds I had forgotten (cipro, flagyl, donnatal), that I had a J pouch and that I needed the meds and also told them exactly where I left them. The French Canadian border guards looked at me like I was crazy, but they must have figured I could not be making this up, so they let me back through, and I drove back to Montreal.

I got to the hotel, parked out in front and explained to the front desk staff what had happened. They gave me a key to the room and said they did not know if it had been cleaned yet, but if it was, the maids might have taken and disposed of my medications. Fortunately I had left very early in the a.m. and as I got to the 20th floor of the hotel, where my room was, the maids had not gotten to cleaning that room yet. I retrieved my meds and drove back to the USA.

Since this happened, whenever I travel, I never unpack my meds. I always leave them in a pocket of one of my bags and they stay in that pocket for the duration of the trip.

Thanks guys for the moral support and personal experiences. I know can be crazy, that's for sure!
DJB..Since I am a truck driver and accustomed to being in and out of places, taking showers on the road and stuff I have always been careful when on the road...The worst I did was loose my log book one day and got pulled over. I had left it a the truck wash place some 200 mi down the road. I wasn't too worried about it since it was a late Friday night the scales were all closed. My fine was $90(this is a REALLY LONG time ago!) My boss paid for it since I had the truck washed twice that week...
Thank you Cher for your support as well. Even though I may kick myself in the gut every once in a while It still manage to smile. It just depends on how big the boot is!
I gotta love life for all the things it throws our way...
Julie

But Julie....I'm still waiting to hear if you found your scripts.
Just in case you run into that again, you can just ask the pharmacy to put them on file til you are ready to fill them, I know when I put something in a safe place it usually takes a really long time to find it....
LoriP

Just FYI, some pharmacies won't "hold" C-IIs (the schedule of narcotic that Oxycontin and Percocet are) because of the liability of loosing them. I know where I work we don't because we have many people that switch between our locations, and if you drop off in one location, you can't pick that rx up in another, once again due to the "schedule" narcotic that it is. You'll just have to ask your pharmacist their particular rules. Have a good one, and I hope you find them soon!

Well, I still haven't found them so I saw my temporary doc and threw myself on the floor begging for mercy(lol). She said that she understood BUT DON'T let it happen again..I told her that when I find them I will bring them in to her so I can prove my innocence.
O ya, check this out...I still have a couple percocets left from the prescription the ER gave me(4 pills)and I can't get them until the 28 th(Thursday) because my insurance Co thinks it's too early to pick them up today....
Don't be off by one day...This is insanity!
Thanks to Rush and his cohorts buying Oxycontin and snorting the darn stuff...How stupid can a person be???? They make life miserable for all the people that really have a need for this medication! GRRRR
O ya, I also mentioned about the way how I can't remember the location of things(see previous post). Her thoughts were that it's possible that my body is changing and reacting differently even though it's the same dose..All this will have to wait until Dr Licht(my doc)gets tired of changing diapers all day and loosing her voice from speaking baby speak
Julie

Hey Julie ,copperhead here fellow Oxycontin addict.If it was I that had lost the prescription I think I would have lost my mind just thinking of the coming withdrawls.I would rather walk on red hot coals or chew glass than to have to go thru those nightmarish,horrendous,horrrifying,you get my drift,withdrawls.I would literally have torn the place apart looking for them.And you are absolutely correct when you say how they look at you like you are Rush Limbaugh trying to scam a hit or something simply because you honestly misplaced your script.I hate being looked at like I`m a drug addict,well I am one when it comes to the Oxcy,in the drug store when something goes wrong with my script which happens once in a blue moon but when it does they look at you like you`re trying to score a hit.I truly abhorr,loathe,being on these stupid pills they have ruined my life but on the other hand without them I don`t think I`d be here writing this post for the pain.Anyhoo I sure as hell hope you find your life savers and that they are not indeed lost.Good luck with the hunting.

Hey guys,

The real problem is a number of doctors have legitimate liability concerns, and I mean criminal liability, for overprescribing controlled substances. In CT we recently sent a dentist to jail for overprescribing narcotic pain meds to his patients and family members who were then selling them on the street. Some pain management specialists I have worked with professionally on PI cases make their patients sign agreements which I have never seen before mainly for liability reasons. The liability insurance carriers force them to do that as a condition of providing coverage in some cases as they have to fill out a detailed questionnaire.

It's always a case of a few bad apples spoiling it for the many. There are some patients who have legit pain medication needs and others who are simply abusers that exaggerate their injuries in order to justify continuing treatment in order to get the pain meds. I know because I have represented a few and their doctors would call me to complain after hearing the litany of excuses: dog ate my prescription; I lost the prescription; my daughter accidentally threw away the prescription, etc., blah blah blah. At a certain point it does get ridiculous. This is not to criticize anyone but just to explain why it is so difficult for the people who do have legit pain medication needs.

Thanks Copperhead!
I know exactly what you mean! I ran out one time on a weekend and was so sick(I didn't realize it was withdrawals)and landed in the ER. They couldn't figure out what was wrong until the doc started asking questions about when I had last taken any medications.. Of course this was like 3hrs later and I had began vomiting, even with the antinausea stuff...
They doubled up my dose and gave me both the contin part and the percocet and I started to feel much better about an hour or so later....
I was a bit more ignorant back then...
Julie

O, I agree there is a real concern out there for abuse of medication, but I think if you have one regular doc and THEY know you, then having a problem with a prescription should'nt be as big a deal as they make it out to be. An example of this is just looking at Copperhead's and my medical history(not you per se, but the docs') Then there would be evidence of need.
The same would apply for me husband who has been taking Klonopin since it was an experimental drug way back in the early 70's...He has epilepsy, if he doesn't have it he will have a seizure...No question about it. So, after 38yrs of taking the same dose month after month after month someone is going to start questioning his need?????
THAT'S where the problem is..Not believing folks with totally legitimate needs and histories
Julie