If you have Parkinson's, you probably shouldn't try to alter your own prescription
This past week, we had a guy gentleman come in with prescriptions written for some usual suspects in the treatment of Parkinson's, one of them being Klonopin. His symptoms were relatively obvious, too. What was funny in a "Haha, this is really pathetic" sort of way was that the prescriber had signed them in blue ink with rather normal (even neat!) handwriting.
In the no sub box, this guy had scrawled "no substitution" in handwriting that looked like calligraphy done with a squiggle pen. And of course the ink was black.
Yeah okay, buddy. I mean, I don't really care if you want the brand name, just drive up the road to New Hampshire and request it. Don't alter the damn prescription and think I'm not going to notice. There are two parties that should be writing things on the prescription, and you are not one of them.
I didn't rake him over the coals for it. It wasn't worth the time and emotional energy, and he seemed like a nice enough fellow. I hope it doesn't happen again.
The ending is that the insurance (Tricare) wouldn't cover brand name if there was a generic available. Big surprise. So he ended up with his clonazepam, generic Sinemet CR, and generic something else. What a bunch of idiotic hoops to jump through to end up back at square one.
But seriously, what person — who knows they can't write due to a medical condition — alters their own prescription? In the wrong colored ink, no less?
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
AIDS vaccine fails during human trials
I don't think even Jack Friday could laugh at this one. Merck halted human trials of their AIDS vaccine last week after it failed. (The STEP trial):
Researchers did not expect the vaccine to prevent infection, but had hoped that it might hinder the growth of the virus enough to delay the onset of full-blown AIDS and make it harder for an infected individual to transmit HIV to others, creating a stopgap while they searched for a more effective therapy.
…
…but an independent monitoring panel conducted a scheduled review of the vaccine's effectiveness and found that 24 of 741 participants injected with the vaccine had contracted HIV, compared with 21 of 762 given a dummy vaccine, Merck said in a statement last week. The two infected groups had nearly the same levels of virus in the blood.
The next step is to figure out why it failed. Full results will probably be published sometime in 2008. Right now, researchers figure the it's because a T-cell vaccine isn't enough to stave off AIDS.
Conventional vaccines work by triggering the immune system into manufacturing antibodies against an infectious organism, but such a vaccine has proved elusive for the rapidly mutating HIV.
Researchers for the past decade have focused on the T cell approach, based on studies showing that monkeys receiving such vaccines against simian immunodeficiency virus, related to HIV, lived longer or had lower viral levels than usual.
In V520, each of three HIV genes—gag, pol and nef—was inserted into a weakened adenovirus, one of the viruses that cause the common cold. Human cells infected by the viruses produced the gene products, giving T cells an advance exposure to them.
This is truly unfortunate news.
[tags]HIV, AIDS, STEP trial, Merck[/tags]
How do you guys save your knees?
For you folks that stand all day every day, how do you keep your knees from going to shit? I'm in my mid-20s, and my knees hurt so badly after even an hour of standing that I'm considering going to the doctor. What, if anything, he'll suggest, I don't know. I'm starting to dread my long days, and I'm starting to get pissed off at people more easily because I'm in pain.
This is not cool, and it's only come about recently thanks to working 6 on and 1 off.
When I had time to work out regularly, this wasn't a problem. I just don't have the time to work out at all right now — and yes, it's not simply a matter of "making time" — the time does not exist during the day for me to do this.
Drug rep swag
This seems à propos after being called out by The Angry Pharmacist today for accepting things from drug reps. (Oh the horror!)
Yesterday's Pluggers:
FWIW, I don't have a single pen with a drug name on it. I think the only non-edible swag I have is a Vioxx coffee cup…
Speaking of things that suck: waking up during your own autopsy
This man, Carlos Camejo — seen holding his own death certificate — woke up during his own autopsy after a car wreck:
Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue, where examiners began an autopsy only to realize something was amiss when he started bleeding. They quickly sought to stitch up the incision on his face.
"I woke up because the pain was unbearable," Camejo said, according to a report on Friday in leading local newspaper El Universal.
Ouchies. I guess they're not as thorough in other countries when it comes to pronouncing someone dead…
He should go as a vampire for Halloween. 
(Images preserved in order to stave off the inevitable Reuters link rot.)
Don't you just hate when this happens?
She swerved to avoid the cup of soda and drove into the side of the pharmacy instead. How she got up on the MASSIVE SIDEWALK is anyone's guess.
Just bloody brilliant.
Lasagna and heartburn
Today's Close to Home reminded me of something we used to do to take the edge off the sauce when my dad was having heartburn problems: a small amount of baking soda into the sauce while it was simmering.
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, also available in tablet form for — you guessed it — heartburn. Certainly though, Tums (calcium carbonate) are far more common than soda bicarb tabs. I suspect this is due to marketing more than anything else.
I wonder if McPherson knew he was unintentionally close to a mark?
[tags]Lasagna, heartburn, cooking[/tags]