A Whoops

So I made a mistake recently that I don't think I've made before, and I'm hoping I've done what's needed to remedy it, but it's still not ideal.

Here's what happened:

I have taken thyroid medicine all my life.  I've been on the same dosage of synthroid for a bazillion years.  

A year or so ago I was getting pretty upset about a few things going on health wise, one of them being weight gain for "no reason" (as in I wasn't suddenly eating more or exercising less, there was no reason I could think of that it was happening.)  I talked to my doctor about it a few times, wondering if it was hormonal changes (lady hormones) or maybe my thyroid meds needed changed (also a hormone... they all hang out together so it's hard to piece apart who's doing what) and she thought that was a possibility so we changed my dose (made it higher.)

Things didn't change physically but my blood work did and it got precipitously weird (very very low low low) and so we went back to my regular dose.  (Blood work didn't change which has been a whole other mystery but that's not the point of this post.)

So, remember that I've been on thyroid meds all of my life, literally from childhood.  So I'm pretty darn used to managing my prescriptions and keeping up to date with them.

A few weeks back I got a couple of things refilled and blah blah blah.

Well, this Sunday I was refilling my weekly "pill box" (have had one of those as long as I can remember too!) and I was popping in the thyroid meds and I noticed that they weren't all the same colour.  WHAT?  

I looked at my bottle.  It was the higher dose.  Oh no!  Did my doctor mess up my last refill?  That didn't seem like her.  Had my pharmacy made a mistake filling?  Also didn't seem like them, but what was going on here?

I looked IN the bottle, there were mainly one and a couple of the other and the prescription date was June, yes, but June 2024.  Last year.  And that's when I put two and two together.

When I had stopped the new/higher dose, I had held on to the pretty full bottle.  

And when I was running out of the regular/lower dose, I just saw a bottle with "synthroid" on it and chucked the last few in there, and disposed of the bottle, telling my brain I had just picked up a new bottle.  It wasn't until I went to refill my pill box this weekend that I discovered that I hadn't joined two of the same strengths, I had pulled out the higher strength bottle and added the lower strength to it.  D'oh!

I refill the box on a Sunday and of course doctors are closed on weekends, so I waited until the pharmacy was open and asked if maybe there was a regular dose on file that they could make up for me but nope, it had run out and I'd not thought I needed to renew it as I saw that "new" bottle right there (not looking closely enough at the dosage.  Sigh.)  They said they could do me an emergency amount if needed but I kind of panicked about it because get this... they're doing construction near where my pharmacy is and the last two times I've gone to pick up it has been a NIGHTMARE trying to get in and out of there and with the heat and lack of sleep this weekend the idea of dealing with that became TOO MUCH and I panicked and was like "no, no it's ok, I'll manage" because honestly I will.  I have a few days worth of the proper dosage and a bottle full of the too high dosage and it's not going to kill me.

Sent an email to my doctor asking for an appointment.  Got the auto-out of office reply and noticed a sentence in there about "if you're out of a prescription have the pharmacy fax us" darn it, I didn't know that!  I kind of stressed again about it but a few hours later I called the pharmacy back and asked if they'd do that and the pharmacist was like yeah sure no problem, so then I emailed the doctor back again and was like sorry, me again, they're going to fax you?  When I was talking to the pharmacist my plan had been to ask them to send it to a pharmacy closer to me (due to the construction) but I chickened out on that at the time and so if they do get a refill from my doc and they do make it up for me I figure the temps will be cooler and maybe I'll have slept and then maybe I'll feel more comfortable dealing with the road work construction mess (that they'll have made a few more days of progress on but unlikely that will be noticeable) and so I made it a "future me" problem.  Or maybe I can even ask them to deliver it or transfer it at a later time I don't know it just is weird how hard it is for me to ask people I'm paying for a service to do me something that feels like a favour.  Without even knowing if it's something they'd mind doing at all.

But... baby steps.  Get the right dosage prescribed and filled and then figure out getting it in to my hands.

But yeah, first time I've ever done that (missed out on refilling a prescription with my doctor and running out at home) in decades of dealing with this.  I guess the lesson for me is not to keep the other bottle around?  (Not sure why I did to be fair.)