It was truly an unbelievable day yesterday. A day that did not end with her infusion. Not only did it not end with an infusion, it didn’t end with an answer as to when the infusion is going to be. I don’t even know how or where to begin. It turns out that CVS pharmacy is broken into two segments. One segment is the one that called on Monday rescheduling my delivery to Wednesday and the other segment is the one that called Wednesday morning asking when my Rituxan infusion is supposed to happen. That’s the one that lead to yesterday’s post. Once again a problem with my infusion.

Turns out my medicine was delivered first thing in the morning. How wonderful. Only problem now was I told my nurse there was gonna be an issue and she changed her whole day accordingly. She wasn’t going to show up until probably 1 o’clock. My medicine was delivered by 10. When I finally open the boxes to check the medicine it was probably more like 11:30.  I went over everything so many times with the pharmacy, it never even occurred to me there would be a problem. Yet, there was a problem, a very big problem.

The protocol for a Rituxan infusion is 250mg of steroids, Benadryl, and then a step up process for administering the Rituxan itself. The Rituxan is mixed in with a litter of a saline bag that then goes in through the IV for roughly 4 hours. I’ve been doing my infusion either Ocrevus or Rituxan for over 3 years. I know what the protocol is. So when I open that box, I immediately saw problems. First, there were no steroids. Second, there was no Benadryl. Third, there was no pump to administer the step up dosing for the Rituxan. Fourth, and probably the worst, the saline bag was for 250mg which was completely incorrect. That’s when the nightmare began.

It took me an hour to get through to the CVS pharmacy. Thankfully by the time that happened my nurse was here. We were transferred 3 times each time to the pharmacist yet every time we spoke to a person they’d also transfer us to a pharmacist. They had no idea the correct protocols how to administer Rituxan. They didn’t even know what Solumedrol was, we had to spell it for them. My local place where I was getting my infusion from, the second one called me Wednesday morning, is also part of CVS pharmacy, so we were hoping that they could help but the two systems aren’t linked yet. So one has all my orders right and the other one doesn’t. Unfortunately, the one that doesn’t is the one that sent me my medicine. Then they were supposed to call my doctor and I never heard from them again.

So now it’s 10:33 Thursday morning and I have no idea what’s happening.  I called my local pharmacy this morning to try to speak to them but the woman that handles my case wasn’t in yet. My nurse is calling her managers to try to figure all this out. Right now the only thing that’s right is I have the actual Rituxan. I don’t even know if I’m getting my infusion today. I have no words for this nightmare. The amount of anxiety and stress that this is put me through is just beyond ridiculous. I really don’t even know what else to do.