Confessions of a Pharmacy Technician

I am a Certified Pharmacy Technician.  I have my state license and PTCB certification.  I need both of those to work in Oregon.   I got all those fancy letters and words halfway through my life when I did that 'retraining' thing a few years back.

Before that I worked in technical support, administrative support, and data entry.  I'm a speed typer and I can most probably type 'you' before most of you can hit the 'u' button for the Internet-speak shortcut.  But unfortunately, most jobs in those areas have gone so...

I've also worked in stores, mainly Walmart, but a few years ago, I had a chance to take a year long course to qualify to work as a pharmacy technician.  I attended a place called Anthem College, which I heartily recommend.  Really!  No, really, when I first started there, suspicious me (I'm always suspicious) thought it was probably going to turn out to be some scam or some con.  I was really wrong!  Anthem College, at least here in Beaverton, took their job seriously.  And I mean seriously! 

My pharmacy instructor was not only a most wonderful person but had a masters degree and over 13 years experience working in the field.  She was also a monstrous task master who demanded that her students really learned their stuff and didn't give out top marks to anyone.  

But that's not what I really wanted to talk about right now, as cool as it was. 

I remember sitting in early training, hearing stories of working as an Allied Health Professional.  They told these tear jerking stories about patients, both ones that made it and those that didn't.  Stories about really making a difference and mattering in other people's lives.  Of course, being the cynical person I usually am, I rolled my eyes with a few other equally cynical classmates, chaulking it all up to health professional glurge....

Until I started working.

My first assignment, infact my hands on training assignment, was in an oncology clinic.  That's cancer, for the uninitiated and untrained.  One of my main jobs there, because I was relatively young and the newbie, was to run the chemotherapy to the nurses stations out on the floor.   The clinic sort of was in a big circle with the pharmacy at one point and all the nurses stations around this circle on the inside.

I'm sort of a hyper guy and would walk as fast as my thin little legs can carry me.  I'd keep going around and around and after awhile certain patients started taking notice.  Many were amused.  Others laughed.  One was this one older patient.  One fine day, I was sitting outside on break, I think I was drinking something.  This patient in a wheelchair was pushed by me and an arm came out toward me.  It was that one older patient who had so amused watched me running around and around, and the arm was stretched out as if to high-five me.  I returned it.   Even retelling the story is making my eyes fill with... its sweat! I'm not crying!

Then a while later, I was actually working at the other place where I did such a good job but some bad apples decided to get rid of me for various political and cultural reasons.  I used to make lots of deliveries to the oncology wing there as well.  One day, I was eating my lunch when this patient sitting up in a booth called out to me.  The patient asked me if I was that guy who brings the drugs.  I said that I was.  Turns out that this patient had been in oncology for a long long time and that this was one of the first times they'd been able to leave.  For them, being able to go down to the cafeteria was like being born again.  The patient thanked me for my hard work, for being the one that brought the medicines up to oncology that allowed them to get that far.   It was one of those moments where you feel like you could fly up and tag superman so hard he'd say 'ow!'

See, this is where I really get pissed off.  I was doing that job.  I was doing it well.  But some stupid people, like that bucktoothed white nationalist who hated me, got rid of me.  Keeping their area latino free (there were none) and white and bright... And do you know who's suffering for it?  The patients! The patients who are paying this company big money to get care.   I'm not there now to run that chemo, I'm not there to take care of those patients, and the people that are left are only concerned with going back to Ozzy and Harriot times! 

Yeah, sure, I'd love to get my teeth fixed and buy a jeep with the $20+/hr base pay the job gave, but I am, at heart, a softie.  I cared about what I was doing.  I wanted to be there doing it.  Now I can't and probably never will again.