Dad and a grapefruit
Had a few ‘interesting’ customers in the pharmacy this week. Here’s just a couple of them:
• The young lad that came up to the counter to collect a prescription I had called out. He said it was for his Dad and so as usual I asked him to confirm the address. Well he didn’t know it; neither did he know the name of the street where his father lived or his father’s birthday.
I did feel really sorry for him since he was obviously very embarrassed, but I didn’t think my questions were unreasonable (!) and all I could do was explain that I couldn’t hand the prescription out to him since he couldn’t verify who it was for.
Five minutes later a rather irate ‘Dad’ came into the shop to tell me, in a loud voice, where he lived and when he was born. Oh well….
• The lady recently started on simvastatin who, on counselling about not eating grapefruits / drinking grapefruit juice, exclaimed “wash your mouth out young lady”. She apparently loves grapefruit and had even “pre-ordered a grapefruit for her holiday breakfasts” in a couple of weeks time.
So I told her that, in my opinion, she was on the best statin with the most evidence behind it, but that if it was a real problem there were alternative statins available.
• The young lad that came up to the counter to collect a prescription I had called out. He said it was for his Dad and so as usual I asked him to confirm the address. Well he didn’t know it; neither did he know the name of the street where his father lived or his father’s birthday.
I did feel really sorry for him since he was obviously very embarrassed, but I didn’t think my questions were unreasonable (!) and all I could do was explain that I couldn’t hand the prescription out to him since he couldn’t verify who it was for.
Five minutes later a rather irate ‘Dad’ came into the shop to tell me, in a loud voice, where he lived and when he was born. Oh well….
• The lady recently started on simvastatin who, on counselling about not eating grapefruits / drinking grapefruit juice, exclaimed “wash your mouth out young lady”. She apparently loves grapefruit and had even “pre-ordered a grapefruit for her holiday breakfasts” in a couple of weeks time.
So I told her that, in my opinion, she was on the best statin with the most evidence behind it, but that if it was a real problem there were alternative statins available.
posted by Dee Spencer at 1:01 pm
2 Comments:
I think you'll find that your grapefruit loving patient can eat her breakfast grapefruit OK, but musn't drink the juice as that is made from whole grapefruit including the skin which is where the chemical that causes the problem with simva is concentrated
Many thanks for your comment. I have checked this out with Medical Information of the brand leader and they state that the warning now includes the whole of the grapefruit including the grapefruit segments.
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