Need Advice (Attn: Pharmacy Folks)

[CorneliaMarieRocks]

Ok, so I went to the dr. today to get a refill on my pain meds & because it was late in the afternoon by the time I got out & my mom wasn't feeling well, I took the 'script to a different pharmacy than the one we usually use.

When I got the bottle, it said on the label 10mg hydrocodone but when I looked in the bottle, they looked more like 5mg pills (which are white, my usual 10mg pills are light blue). I called the store & talked to someone in the pharmacy who assured me that they were 10mg pills, but I'm not so sure. They're not working like they should, I took a pill & a half at 10:30 & here I am at midnight & I'm still hurting.

So, my question is, should I take the bottle back to the pharmacy tomorrow & ask the pharmacist to swap them out for the blue pills? Or would they even do anything being's that I didn't bring them in the same day?

I don't wanna be sucky about this, but I can only afford to go to the dr every so often for re-fills & I need my pills to actually do what they're supposed to. But I don't wanna question someone who knows more than I do

Help!

[Aethian]

My bottles all say what the pills should look like. Look for that and see if they match the inside.
One of my meds went from pink to orange not to long ago.

[Food Lady]

I would go back and ask if the color/size has changed. Adopt a "I'm confused; I need help" attitude so they don't feel defensive. (They might think, "OK, we already told you....") Also, I'm glad that in my state they are required to open the bottle & show me, so that if it seems wrong I can say something.

[AccountingDrone]

Does your pharmacy print the name of the manufacturer of the pills on the label? You can go online and google the manufacture and name of med to get the image of the pill to see if it matches what you found in your bottle.

The navy has a habit of giving me I guess what you could call generic for some of my meds, they aren't really generic but they are by several different manufacturers as they source meds - my clonidine has been little uncoated white pills, uncoated orange pills, coated yellow pills and coated white pills for the same dose over the course of a single year. I know I could get my doc to prescribe a specific manufacturer but I am not sensitive to the bulk fillers.

[keep in mind that a MG, milligram is a *small* measure - most of your pills are bulking agent/fillers like lactose, cellulose or some other neutral sugar to make the pill larger to make it easier to handle. I have had some amazingly tiny pills, my colchicine pills are tiny frex -

Here it is on a US dollar bill, nestled in by the serial number. The active ingredient in this tiny pill is about a tenth of the actual pill at best.

Honestly, if you condensed my morning medications active ingredients, the 10 or so pills I take would combine into a single capsule *sigh* I wish I could afford a compounding pharmacy to actually compress all my meds into a single pill. It would make my meds so much nicer to take.

[Ree]

I would suggest you just take the pills back to the pharmacy where you purchased them and have them checked. That is not sucky. I believe pharmacists understand in situations like that.
It's entirely possible, because it's a different pharmacy, that the pills my not look exactly the same as the ones you normally get. They may use a different supplier.

Without actually seeing the pills, the bottle or the prescription, it's pretty hard for any of the members associated with pharmacies to make any kind of determination.