Drug Topics - November 10, 2008 - (Page 21)

Professional COMMUNITY PRACTICE Jim Plagakis Galveston, Hurricane Ike, pharmacy Thirty-six hours after the eye of Hurricane Ike passed over my home, I got a call on my cell from a pharmacist co-worker. He asked, "Are you and your family safe?" “We are good,” I said. We were staying in the comfort of a guesthouse on a Texas hill-country ranch owned by a woman with whom I share a great-grandfather. She had gone to school with my brother. Although she and I had never met, she offered us a place to go if we ever had to evacuate Galveston. “So you were smart and decided to get away from the island,” he said. “I may be dumb, my friend, but I am not stupid,” I replied. We had planned on riding out the storm, hunkered down. Our townhouse was ﬁnished in 2006, built to hurricane code. For a week, Ike’s projected path had been moving steadily to the northeast. If it had stayed the projected course, we would have been on the left side of the storm, which they call the dry side, the safer side. But Ike quit its northeast movement and Galveston remained right in the crosshairs. Then came the ofﬁcial word, during the early morning of Sept. 12. We heard a stern, drill-sergeant voice use the words “death,” “surge,” and “certain” all in the same sentence. W W W.D R U GTO P I C S .C O M My co-worker continued, “I just want to remind you, Jim, that we switched shifts on Tuesday. You work late.” “Do you really expect the drugstore to be open on Tuesday?” I asked. Hurricane Ike was a monster with an area almost the size of the state of Texas. It barreled into Galveston full force. In 1900, the storm surge was 23 feet, but we now have the seawall built in 1902. The drugstore did not open that Tuesday. Sept. 18, ﬁve days after the storm hit, I spoke with my co-worker. He was working. “I just picked one of the open stores in this area and went to work. You could too.” “I’m three hours away,” I said and added, “You picked? What about the scheduler?” “They said it was my choice. I would be paid whether I worked or not.” Hmmm! That sounds like a way to get loyal employees. Hurricane or not, lives have to be lived. Bills have to be paid. Babies have to be fed. Family members need dental care. I would have bet that either Walgreens or CVS would be the ﬁrst one up and running and ﬁlling prescriptions after Ike. They had competing stores cattycorner to each other at Galveston’s busiest intersection. But neither was ﬁrst. It was Kroger, a store right on Seawall Boulevard, less than a football ﬁeld from where the storm hit. The seawall is 17 feet above sea level, but the surge was higher than that. How did they manage? Good engineering, dedicated employees who came from as far away as Dallas, and humongous generators. “I stopped by my store to help out, but no one was there. ” Wal-Mart, by the way, wasn’t even in the race. When Kroger, Walgreens, and CVS were ﬁlling prescriptions, the Wal-Mart parking lot was jammed with trucks. I wonder whether they are counting on the proﬁts from the $4 prescriptions to get the phar- macy running again. Don’t hurt yourself laughing. The last independent alive was Broadway Drug Store. They took water. Lots of water. Brown, salty, E. coli-infested water. Broadway is most likely done for. The Last Picture Show. My pharmacist license got me onto the island. Essential personnel. I stopped by my store to help out, but no one was there, so I wound around down electrical wires, past burned-out houses close to huge mounds of debris, and made it to our home. I called V. “We are okay,” I told her. The lower level (garage and storage) had held ﬁve feet of ﬁlthy water for 12 hours. “How can you tell?” Her voice was thick with worry. “There is not one drop of water upstairs,” I said. “Not a bit of mold in the refrigerator.” Two weeks after the storm, I stopped at my store to get my schedule. A terriﬁed woman was sitting in the pharmacy waiting area. The pharmacist on duty said she had been there all day. She kept moaning, "I ain’t got nowhere to go.” JIM PLAGAKIS is a community pharmacist in Galveston, Texas. You can e-mail him at jpgakis@hotmail.com and cc us at drugtopics@advanstar.com. You can also check out his Web site at jimplagakis.com. DRUG TOPICS N OV. 10, 2008 21 http://www.jimplagakis.com http://WWW.DRUGTOPICS.COM

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Drug Topics - November 10, 2008 Contents Up Front Up Front in Depth Letters Rx Care Government Community Practice First Responders Clinical Practice Self-Care FDA Safety Page Weighing the Complications of Obesity New Products Viewpoint

Drug Topics - November 10, 2008

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