I suppose that in some respects, I should be flattered. All day long, people ask me all sorts of questions. What type of cold medicine should I buy? Will Drug A interact with Drug B? Does this drug cause this side effect? People must think me knowledgeable enough to think I would have all the answers. And even though sometimes those questions become tedious, they are all directly related to what it is that I do. But then there are the questions that not only do I not have an answer to, but that if the roles were reversed, I wouldn't even bother asking the local retail pharmacist.
Of all the off the wall things people ask me, questions concerning animals are probably the biggest headache. Not because I am forced to say "I don't know", but because my answer inevitably causes a ton of butthurt which in turn leads to smirks and smart-assed comments. Let me explain this to all of you in the general public who might ever think of bothering me or one of my colleagues: Pharmacists, unless they have chosen to read up on the subject, don't know jack shit about veterinary medicine. Why you ask? Because they don't teach us that crap in school since we deal with humans 99.999999999% of the time.
What they do teach us are the laws governing DVMs' prescribing authority. But when your doggie doctor calls in an RX for tramadol, I just assume he knows what he's doing. And that's about it. So don't get pissed when I refer you to a vet. For example, a few weeks ago I had a woman tell me her dog was "bleeding out of its ears" and wanted to know what was causing it and what she should do about it. Ummm....call your vet. "Don't you have anything I could buy?" Sure, I have throw-away cell phone up front you can buy so you can call your vet.
"My cat has diarrhea, can I give her Pepto?" Beats the shit out of me. Maybe Pepto causes renal failure in cats. Maybe it causes some kind of feline Reye's Syndrome. Don't get all shitty with me about it. I had one woman who got so nasty that I finally said to her, "When you're in your doctor's office, do you ask him about your cat?" She said no. "Why not?" Because he's a people doctor. Exactly you silly twat. And I'm a people pharmacist.
Where I work, people's resistance to going to a vet is all based on one thing- money. Going to the ER for a Tylenol prescription is fine because "I got Medicaid!" But vets don't accept welfare (at least not yet; perhaps if Mr. Obama gets reelected) which means poor Rover has to bleed out of his ears because momma got drunk and kicked him off the trailer stoop. Owning a pet is a responsibility. If you are unable or unwilling to take care of one, then you should stick to a house plant. Naturally I would say the same should apply to children, but we gots the gubbermint to take care of them.
