The Po Show

Running on Empty

Well, I seem to have run out of time. Or maybe not time, exactly, but my grace period for seeking professional treatment is coming to a close.

I'll explain: a year ago I went to see a GP in Belmont for a physical. I mostly went because I was running out of Paxil, from my prescription refills given to me by my therapist in Davis. I had stretched out that refill as long as I could, by breaking the tabs in half and by skipping days. But by last January, I'd come to the end of what I could do, so I went in for a physical. I was given a prescription for Paxil, with 3 refills. Again, I stretched out the prescriptions, by breaking tabs in half (harder this time, since she had prescribed 10mg tabs instead of the 20mg tabs I'd had before).

I had one refill left when we moved here in August. I had it filled and found, to my surprise and delight, that the bottle still said I had one refill! A month or so later I refilled it, and again it listed one remaining refill! It was like some children's fairy tale, with the neverending bottle of happy pills. (Of course, they aren't really happy pills, or else I'd be a lot happier. But I've found that my attempts to wean myself off entirely have been very very bad.)

However, all good things must come to an end. The prescription did have an expiration of 1/29/05, a year after it had originally been submitted. I refilled it on the 27th (and the bottle came back stating that I still had one refill!) and then I waited a couple of weeks. I called the auto refill number at the pharmacy, punched in the prescription number, and was promptly told that they couldn't place that refill order because the prescription had expired. The automated voice helpfully offered to take a message so the pharmacist could call my doctor for a new prescription. Well, that wasn't going to happen, so I hung up.

So now I have to actually get off my ass and do something. Find a new psychiatrist who can write me a new prescription (and possibly suggest a new drug that would help me more). Or make an appointment with some random GP again and get another prescription that I can eke out as long as possible.

But I have to do something, as soon as we get back from our trip to CA that begins tomorrow. I snapped most of the pills in half last night, and counted them. They are not going to last forever.