pharmacy fun

Today we drove around and around looking for our new pharmacy, the Inwood Pharmacy in north Houston. We had neglected to grab the phone before we left, so we were just going by our memory of where it appeared to be on google maps. But no pharmacy was evident. I stopped at a place which was part of a hospital campus in order to ask about where this pharmacy might be. And lo and behold, there was the Inwood Pharmacy tucked inside, with no signage whatsoever outside its doors.

But let me tell you--we are happy to have found it. The owner is the pharmacist, who will compound our special drugs, and he filled our first prescription in a timely manner. The place is small and exactly how a pharmacy should be, where you talk to the pharmacist and know who is filling your prescriptions.

We switched from chain pharmacies after having bad luck with the Walgreens near us. Not all Walgreens pharmacies compound drugs, first of all, there are only a few in Houston. One was pretty close to where we live, but we kept running into problems. First it was that they don't compound on the weekend, but they neglected to tell us. Next, when we called in our refill early so they could compound it before the weekend, it wasn't early enough. Finally, there was just no good reason, and they had our drugs ready a couple days later than we expected. In Isaac's case, we don't want to miss doses, especially multiple doses. And he runs out of the medicine pretty quick, because he has 7mL three times a day.

Our new pharmacist, Vince, gave us two nice sized bottles so that we won't have to keep coming back so often. And he was straightforward about when he could get the drug components and when we would have it completed. We like that. On a day like today, when we make sure to fill something before a long weekend, it is good to know that we have somebody reliable we can count on.

Having said all that, if Isaac starts to relapse again, Bonnie and I are on the same page about trying the more potent VSL probiotics and giving probiotics and diet a good long run before we resort to steroids. We didn't get too far in slowly introducing the SCD (Specific Carb Diet), where we decided to eliminate first sugar, then lactose completey (he already doesn't have much dairy at all), gluten. In fact, he's cleared up really well now and having good old regular poop and everything seems hunky dory. Of course we think, well, this is the good thing about the steroids, bad as I believe them to be... but of course, we don't really know that he wouldn't naturally get to this healed point without--or that anything else we might do might bring about a similar result.

We have these facts. Isaac was relapsed down to stools with blood (albeit small amounts) daily. (This started with the soy incident at the end of March. And even though we got back to our good soy free, vegetarian-no-dairy-milk diet). After 11 days he started daily doses of the steroid medication prednisolone. A couple days later he also got a water cleansing enema. After five days of the steroids we saw the last blood in his stool. But except for a few good starts (sometimes a bowel movement would start of like a "perfect 3" and then degrade to a watery 7) they remained smelly (We label the smell "UC smell" because it's become distinctive), and generally unhealthy for about 10 days after taking steroids. At that point, the good stools took over and have seemed to improve in consistency and regularity. So, anyway, 17 days of stool with blood.

My my, I've got to get less wordy.