Rituxan Infusion Finally Done but still wasn’t smooth

Rituxan Infusion Finally Done but still wasn’t smooth

I finally got my infusion done on Saturday but it was still with a few headaches. I got a delivery on Friday of a box from the pharmacy that seemed to be another box of supplies. I still didn’t have the steroids, Benadryl, Saline Bag or the pump. It took me 50 minutes on hold until I got someone to pick up. From there I was bounced around to three different people. The last person I was speaking to was telling me she can only email somebody to find out the answer. I’m sure you could understand by this point my patience was a little thin so I might not of been the most calm of calls. Needless to say she actually hung up the phone on me. This was now, one hour and 30 minutes into the call.  I still have no answer where the rest of my stuff was. However, at some point in my bouncing all over the place, somebody did explain to me that there was two boxes being delivered and I only had one box yet nobody knew where the second box was. 

So once again I started the process of calling. This time it took an hour and 20 little pop minutes before I got through to a person. I found out that the other box was coming first thing Saturday morning. I got the persons name, I got the information and I felt calmer. Once again after four hours I was completely anxiety ridden from this experience. The infusion never happened. So my nurse comes on Saturday and my box arrives within five minutes of her getting here. We think finally good karma. No such luck.

After spending over an hour on the phone with the pharmacist Thursday night going over every single thing that was wrong with the original order they still got it wrong. Didn’t dilute the steroids, which wasn’t the worst thing. The Benadryl was actually in a small IV bag, again not the worst thing. However the saline was not in the box. You can’t do Rituxan without a litter bag of saline. How did they still get it wrong??? We were completely shocked. 

Once again back calling the specialty pharmacy. Once again on hold for a ridiculous length of time. Once again not able to get an answer or a solution that would help me. Thankfully my infusion nurse had already had all of her managers involved in this complete nightmare that the specialty pharmacy made with my infusion. This time they bypassed protocol and had the local pharmacy send over the bag of saline. Three sticks finding my veins later, I finally started my infusion. What a nightmare. I have 6 months to make sure that never happens again.

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