Never trust the pharmacist!!!!

As some of you know (from my constant whinging ) the gremlins have had diarrohea and it's given them bad nappy rash. Last week the doctor prescribed them some Zinc and Castor cream (coz it's free on prescription). I know that a lot of zinc and castor preparations contain peanut oil so I asked her to specify that it had to be peanut free. So she wrote on the prescription as clear as day (in fact it was typed so no excuses!) "Not to contain peanut oil".

Now you know where this is going... I finished up the stuff we already had here and Mercedes bottom cleared up. I started using the new stuff on Sienna and by the next change her bottom was blistered and bleeding. So I check the ingredients list and the first thing on the list is.... yep, sodding PEANUT OIL!!!!

This is a huge mistake, I can't stress enough how huge it is. If I'd put it on Mercedes it could potentially have been fatal, and now it's confirmed that Sienna has peanut allergy too. I'm still trying to get thru to the pharmacy, they don't answer their phones, but if I don't have amy luck soon I'm going to go down there and blow their eardrums!!

So don't EVER rely on the pharmacist to get things right, ALWAYS double check everything! If I had read the ingredients first poor Sienna would have been saved a lot of pain

i would be marching down there and blowing my stack, that is so not acceptable...i hope that you give them hell, and get and apology which i know wont count for much, and maybe change pharmacies

poor Sienna i hope she recovers soon

Good grief! You have every right to blow your stack over that!

Agree that they need to know how (potentially) serious that screw up was... in fact, Nat (reading over my shoulder) suggested that you drop a line to Fair Go - not as a problem/complaint, more as a warning for other parents.

I like Nats Idea!

Oh No Emma to you and Sienna I would be marching down there and giving them a piece of my mind as others have said it's a pretty big instruction to ignore.

So I finally got thru to him and he said "there's no peanut oil in it" and I said "I'm looking at it and there is" and he said "oh yes, they must have changed the formulation". I said "WTF!!!! "

Is that all they have to say? I made him find the original script and he said "oh yes, it does say no peanut oil" and then tried to say that he didn't realise that the new brand they had got was a differet formula. So I ranted on (and on and on!) about how dangerous it is, and what could potentially have happened had I put it on Mercedes, and that I would have thought the fact that the prsecription SPECIFICALLY said NO peanut oil, that he would have double checked just to make sure.

So now he suggests I give her antihistamine to help the reaction. But I do like Nat's idea of contacting Fair Go, I might email the allergy NZ people too, I'm just so, so nervous at what could have happened had I put it on Mercedes

contact the paper emma, that will get it out to more people than those who watch fair go - and it would be far more effective as a warning. i dont know about the big cities but in invercargill the paper would definately run a story about that.


that is appalling, shocking, and downright negligent - and to have him be so dismissive of it, is really really poor. follow up your phone call with a written letter asking what they will do about it, and how they will change their systems in future.

That is really bad form! I dont think he gets how bad it could of been, thank goodness it wasnt! Hope your gils get better soon

OMG Emma!!!! That is shocking! Even more so because of the pharmacist's response. I would definitely follow it up in writing (you know, when you get the time ). It makes me shudder to think that you could have so easily put it on Mercedes, bad enough that Sienna now has an even worse rash situation to deal with. I hope they come back to you with a better apology and explanation of why this WON'T EVER HAPPEN AGAIN. Can you change pharmacies?

OMG, I would of totally lost it with him big time. Def take photos and do the whole press thing - use some of your media contacts (you must have a few), and get it out there.