Walgreens

On Friday, Jan 8th, 2010, my husband, Mark Ullenberg, picked up a prescription from Walgreens that had been mishandled for 3 days by either Walgreens or this Doctor, Dr. Thomas Reiners. Dr Reiners was faxing 3 medications to Walgreens for refills. Walgreens only refilled 2 of the medications saying that the one had been denied by Dr. Patel. But Dr. Patel was not the prescribing Dr. (although Dr. Patel had prescribed this drug in the past but referred us to Dr. Reiners to refill it). We called the Dr. Reiners office a couple days later, as my husband didn't know why this prescription was denied and by whom, and told Dr. Reiners that Walgreens had said it was denied and that they didn't an order from him for the 3rd prescription. Again Dr. Reiners office faxed the prescription for the alprazolam XR 2mg. When we arrived at Walgreens they said they did not get the order, so they called Dr. Reiner's office but the Dr. was not in and we had to leave. We called Dr. Reiner's office the next morning and they said they had faxed it and they would again try for the 3rd time. They asked me to call Walgreens 10 mins later to confirm that they had received the fax. I did and they had. My husband picked up the prescription, came home, and took the medication. Within 10 minutes he became very woozy and somewhat disoriented and had trouble walking. About 1/2 hour later, about 12:30pm, he laid down and fell sound asleep. I let him sleep until 5 o'clock, at which time I had a very hard time waking him. He tried to sit up and was very disoriented so I had him try and stand thinking he was just sleepy. He could not stand and fell back on the sofa. We tried this a few times over the next few minutes but no success and he immediately kept falling asleep after each attempt. I knew something was wrong, so I asked him how much he took. He could barely talk and not coherently and he could not remember how much he took...he thought maybe one or 2 at most. So I decided to count the pills and it's then that I noticed the pills were not the ones he had taken before. Also, there were only 25 pills in the bottle and not 30. (This miscount has happened to us before with Walgreens with other medications). So I called Walgreens and asked them what this medication was. The pharmacist told me it was not the right prescription. She had filled his prescription for Alprazalom 2mg and not Alprazalom XR 2mg. My husband had never taken this before. I informed the pharmacist of his condition and she said she was sorry for the mistake, but that it was "human error". I asked her what to do and she said if I wanted I could take him to either Urgent Care or the Emergency Room. I told her we did not have insurance and this was their responsibility for the error. She told me that I would have to talk to the Manager of Walgreens to see "if" they would compensate us for Urgent Care of the Hospital. The Manager was not in and she said she would leave a message for her to call me the next day. She just apologized and didn't give me any answer as to how to take care of my husband further but said she would refill the prescription that was ordered. I asked her when this wore off if I should give him his correct medication and she said she didn't know. I also asked her how long the effects of this medication would last and she responded that she didn't know and that the Urgent Care could help me with that. It was too late to call our physician, Dr. Reiners, so I called my husband's therapist and he too suggested my husband go to urgent care. My husband did not want to go, but was not comprehending that he had taken the wrong medication. A friend of ours happened to call while this was going on and he knew of a pharmacist who he could call. We were not able to talk to him, but this friends wife works at a Mental Health facility as a RN and knew of the affects of this drug. She told me to keep monitoring his vital signs, and that if he remained stable he could stay home. I spent the whole night awake monitoring him every 2 hours. My husband slept till 8:30 am today. A full 20 hours later. His therapist and the RN both called me early this morning to check up on my husband's condition. As of this writing, 1pm today, the Walgreens manager has not called me.
Respectfully submitted, Maureen Ullenberg