Shopper Claims CVS Pharmacist Gave Her the Wrong Medicine: “I Couldn’t Move.”
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READ THIS NEXT: CVS Accused of “Intentionally Lying” to Customers About Their Prescriptions .
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Requesting to remain anonymous, she told the news outlet that she was in the store’s drive-thru with her son to get two prescriptions. While waiting for the pharmacist to get the second one, she asked her son to grab her a pill from the first prescription.
“He placed it on the console of my vehicle and I proceeded to tell him to go ahead and give me one because I needed to take it,” the woman told KPRC 2. “He just handed it to me, and I just popped it into my mouth and didn’t think anything of it. But once I got down the road, that’s when I looked down and realized it didn’t look anything like what I have at home.”
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“I entrusted my pharmacy to give me the correct medication,” the woman told KRPC 2. “I feel that they’re professionals and this is what they’re supposed to do.”
When she returned to the location to tell the pharmacist she was given the wrong prescription and had taken one of the pills, she claimed that he did not seem alarmed by the mix-up, which lessened her worries. But about half an hour later, she said her body started to negatively react to what she had taken.
“I was just like rigid stiff from the interaction that the medication they gave me with other medication that I take,” she told KRPC 2. “I became stiff and couldn’t move for several hours. It was horrifying. A horrifying feeling to feel that I couldn’t call for help. I was all alone. I felt like I was going to die here alone. This is what happened. And no one was going to know how or why.”
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Best Life reached out to CVS about this situation, and we will update this story with their response. In a statement to KRPC 2, a spokesperson for the company denied the woman’s claims that she was given the wrong medication.
“Based on our investigation of this alleged incident that occurred over a year ago in April 2022, prescriptions for both of the medications you list below were written for [her] and our pharmacy filled them correctly,” CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis told the news outlet.
For her part, the woman shared a document with KRPC 2 that showed a financial settlement offer of $5,000 from CVS to her for her to “not disclose” the situation to anyone else. DeAngelis did not deny that CVS offered her a financial settlement, according to the news outlet.
“In the interest of customer service, we engaged with our patient in response to her request for compensation,” he told KRPC 2.
But the woman said she did not sign the settlement, which would not have been an admission of error on the CVS’ part.
“I felt a duty to speak out for others to be aware of what they’re picking up from their pharmacy,” the woman explained. “This is life concerning. I thought, ‘Oh well, I can’t get an attorney and I could’ve taken the offer, but what good would that do for the next person who gets the wrong medication?’ It’s a matter of safety, not money.”
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Like all major pharmacy chains, CVS has found itself in the hot seat over alleged medication mix-ups in the past.
Back in 2019, a man from Mississippi filed a federal lawsuit against CVS, claiming the pharmacy “negligently filled” his prescription at least twice with the wrong medicine, according to the Clarion Ledger .
Then, in 2020, CVS paid a penalty of $125,000 to the state of Oklahoma after regulators fined and cited the company for dangerous prescription errors, The New York Times reported.
After her pain did not lessen, she said she called her daughter-in-law, who allegedly discovered that Hector-Faison had been given Adderall instead.
“I’m frustrated, I’m upset, I’m in pain,” Hector-Faison told WANF. “I just want what belongs to me. I want to ease my pain up. I want CVS to make it right. I want them to apologize for giving me the wrong medicine.”
