Family furious after grandmother is given ‘seven times the recommended dosage’ for powerful drug causing her insides to burn and leaving her in need of around the clock care
An outraged family has accused a pharmacy of making a mistake that forced their grandmother into a care home after the drugs burned her from the inside out.
Lisa Carratelli accused the Melbourne pharmacy of incorrectly filling the medication for her 87-year-old mother Maria more than a year ago.
Maria was suffering from rheumatoid arthritis when she was prescribed methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug also used to treat cancer.
The grandmother’s condition rapidly deteriorated, with the drugs burning her intestines, causing hair loss and leaving her unable to care for herself.
Maria is now in a nursing home and cannot walk or eat independently.
Ms Carratelli accused the pharmacy of incorrectly prescribing the correct dosage and claimed her mother was given seven times the prescribed amount of the drug.
An outraged family has accused a pharmacy of making a mistake that forced their grandmother into a care home after the drugs burned her from the inside out
Maria first started complaining of a sore throat and went to Maroondah Hospital in Victoria after doctor visits failed.
Doctors checked her Webster package – a container with separate sections for the days of the week – that is packed by pharmacists.
The doctors were alarmed by what they discovered.
“The hospital started questioning her medication and called the pharmacist,” Ms. Carratelli said Yahoo.
“She’d take two [tablets] once a week, but the pharmacy had packaged the Webster packs with two tablets a day’.
Mrs Carratelli claimed the extra dose had destroyed her mother’s organs.
‘It burned all over her mouth and in her throat. “She was in the hospital for a long time,” she said.
Maria was later sent to Box Hill Hospital, where her discharge document shows the grandmother suffered from ‘methotrexate toxicity resulting in mucositis with pancytopenia’, which is a low red blood cell count.
“Then she ended up in rehab for months before we had to put her in a nursing home because she couldn’t recover,” Ms. Carratelli said.
Besides burning her internally, Maria also lost her hair due to the strong dose of chemotherapy.
Her daughter has said her mother is ‘very vulnerable’ and is convinced ‘the pharmacist almost killed her’.
The pharmacist, whom Mrs Carratelli did not want to be named, is said to have apologized and sent the family flowers.
He claimed that he was not the one who filled the Webster package and that the family has not heard from him since.
Doctors at Maroondah Hospital, Victoria, made a surprising discovery when they looked at the grandmother’s Webster package
Mrs Carratelli’s father is now forced to pay for his wife’s care with a pension.
“When you retire, they don’t really get much [of money],’ she said.
In an effort to prevent such mistakes from happening again, the daughter sought legal advice but was disappointed with the responses from several attorneys.
“They keep saying, because of her age, there was nothing they could do for us,” Carratelli said.
After contacting the Pharmacy Board of Australia to report what she believed could be pharmaceutical malpractice, they told her the same thing.
‘I’m not after money or anything. I just don’t want it to happen to anyone else,
‘I want to help people understand why they should always check their medicines and not just trust the pharmacist.’
Her daughter knows the scenario could have been worse and acknowledges her gratitude that the 87-year-old is alive, but she is furious that the mistake could have been fatal.
“As they get older, it doesn’t mean they’re just going to be pushed aside,” she said.
In Australia, the use of a double-check system in dispensing medicines is regulated solely by a pharmacist.
Currently, two pharmacists are not needed to dispense medicines.
“When dispensing medicines, pharmacists should be guided by professional standards of practice, the Pharmacy Board of Australia code of conduct and guidelines for pharmacists,” an Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency spokesperson said.
including guidelines for the dispensing of medicines and guidelines for devices for dose administration and phased delivery of dispensed medicines.’