There are many ways in which I know I am my father's daughter. My sense of humour and blue eyes are two of the more obvious ones. The one that is not so obvious was my choice of profession.
When I was young my father had a business. He was a pharmacist and owned a pharmacy. I have fond memories of "working" for my dad when I was younger. I started by fronting shelves, making them all pretty looking by bringing stock to the fronts of shelves so it could easily be seen and reached by customers. I graduated to stocking and pricing. I learned to work the cash machines. As I got older I helped out in the pharmacy too. I learned to alphabetize by filing prescriptions in file drawers, long before the age of computers. I even helped count pills, in the days before pharmacy technicians did that. I saw a lot of sides of being a business owner and being a pharmacist.
When it came time to choose a career path my dad suggested pharmacy. I knew standing behind a pharmacy counter was not my thing. I wanted more action in my youth, ha ha. Still, I liked the idea of a medical career and helping people so I went into nursing. Even though I didn't choose pharmacy it still never really left my blood.
I think I have photos of pharmacies in every foreign place I've ever visited. When I accompanied dh to Germany on a business trip last year, we stopped into Heidelberg Castle and visited the German Museum of Pharmacology. It was fascinating seeing what pharmacists have done through the ages.
Moving to another country with 3 young children meant that eventually, I would be needing to visit a pharmacy. I couldn't wait to compare and contrast.
Just after we arrived dd had a loose tooth. It was sore and eventually I ran out of the Tylenol and Advil that we had brought from Canada. So, off I went to the pharmacy.
I looked everywhere on the main shelves, but couldn't find Tylenol or Advil, so I figured I should ask at the counter. I knew I was in trouble when the staff had no idea what Tylenol or Advil were. So I tried the generic names acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Still no idea, so she suggested I speak with the pharmacist. It turns out they really don't have acetaminophen here, they have paracetamol. Trade name Panado. They do have ibuprofen, but the trade name is Nurofen not Advil. The pharmacist was kind enough to show me the different products that I could use.
I found out in that visit, that here, pharmacies here are divided into 2 sections. The first is the pharmacy itself where pharmacists dispense prescription medication and what we would know of in Canada as the non prescription over the counter medications. The second is a staffed section that has pain killers of non prescription strength and some other things.
A few weeks later ds #2 had a terrible head cold. So off I went to the pharmacy again to look for something to help ease his congestion. This time the product, also not anything familiar, was behind the pharmacy counter, but when I went to pay they didn't have a cash in the pharmacy. Instead, they put the purchase in a small cage and secured it with a cable tie. I was told to take it to the front cash and pay for it. The front cash cut the cable tie and took out the product to scan and bag it. I can only assume that this is related to what was in the product, that it was a controlled substance of some kind.
As a nurse I have always had the advantage of knowing what it is my kids are taking. What the various ingredients are and how they interact. My problem here, is that because things have different generic names I find I am having to look up all of the ingredients before my nursey self is willing to give it to my kids.
I have always said that I learn something new every day and that has never been more true, now that we are living in a different country. Just in the medically related mother arena, drug names are different, band-aids are called plasters, and ultrasounds are called sonar scans (a friends daughter needed one, not my kids). It's a whole different medical world over here. I can only be glad that I am not trying to navigate it from within as a practitioner, but instead as an outside observer.
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