What a saga!

So, I had blood and urine tests done in December last year at the hospital which showed I am very low on vitamin D (among other things) as well as dehydrated. My surgeon sent me a letter requested I get a prescription from my GP for Colecalciferol (50,000 units). I had my partner take to letter to the doctor for me because I was working only for it to take over a week to get the prescription! Once I finally did get the prescription, it took a further week to get the medication from the pharmacist because it was a dose they didn’t normally carry and deliveries were delayed due to snow in the area.

I got the meds eventually only to realise they were huge capsules (I thought they’d be smaller, to be honest) that I knew I would have difficulty digesting with my temperamental stoma. I called the doctor and asked if it would be ok for me to break the capsules and empty the power into yoghurt, like I had done before with Lopermide. She said she wasn’t sure and to ask the pharmacist, which I did the next day. Unfortunately, because these are loading doses, the pharmacist said she didn’t think it would be a good idea to break them in case it altered the absorption of the vitamin. She advised I get the meds in tablet form instead which, thankfully, my GP had already done. I get it sent to my local pharmacy and nope! They can’t get them. So, I get my partner to collect the prescription so I can take it to a different pharmacy to see if they can order it instead.

The request letter was made by my surgeon mid-January. It’s been a month I still don’t have medication I can take. This wouldn’t normally annoy me but I’m due to have my stoma take down in just over a week and I haven’t been able to do what my surgeon wanted. I’m tempted to just leave it until after my surgery because then, I may be able to take the capsules instead of wasting even more resources (not to mention money) on getting these tablets when I’ve only got a week and a half to go until the stoma is gone. I guess I’ll see what the other pharmacy says about getting the tablets then go from there.