Accidents happen, but things get real when those accidents affect someone’s health. A teenager was the unfortunate victim of an accidental mishap when her local CVS gave her the wrong pills which left her hospitalized.
As @newsweek reports, Alyssa Watrous of Southington, Connecticut, went to pick up her regular prescription for asthma medication at CVS, but got something else entirely—blood pressure medication to be exact. The teen said she noticed something was wrong when she started experiencing symptoms such as nausea, dizziness, weakness and severe headache. She had been reportedly taking the blood pressure pills for two days before realizing the mix-up.
Things got even worse for Watrous because not only was she taking blood pressure pills, but she was taking much more of it than is generally prescribed. Most prescriptions call for blood pressure meds to be taken once a day, however Watrous was taking three pills at once because she was following the dosage instructions of her asthma medication.
Her mother called both CVS and Poison Control and they advised her to go to the emergency room. Once she arrived, doctors told her she had arrived just in time to avoid serious issues, as she had technically overdosed on the blood pressure pills.
After her hospital visit, Watrous stated feeling relieved that there were not lasting issues:
“They said thank goodness, there wouldn’t be any long-term effects, that it’s something that will leave your system.”
CVS issued an apology that read:
“We sincerely apologize to Ms. Watrous and her family. Prescription errors are a very rare occurrence, but if one does happen, we do everything we can to learn from it in order to continuously improve quality and patient safety.”
Luckily, the outcome for this situation was a positive one, but things could have certainly gone differently.
Roommates, what are your thoughts on this?
