Tesco Pharmacy Fluconazole and ME/CFS Ignorance

TESCO Pharmacy- FLUCONAZOLE-
Guaranteed Discrimination if you have ME/CFS are gay or disabled-Tesco Policy ‘Steals’ Benefit By Refusal To Sell More Than One Pack At A Time.
No Wonder People Buy Medicines Off The Net If They Can.

Why does the British government bother to put medications ‘off prescription’ such as FLUCONAZOLE (DIFLUCAN). If the pharmacists like the Tesco one on 28th Feb 2007 act like ignorant little Hitlers, and actually make them harder to obtain. We are doing them & ourselves a bloody favour by NOT going to a GP for a ‘free’ prescription.

At the best of times, venturing into a supermarket is very stressful if like me , you have ME/CFS. The noise, the lights, the illogical layouts, the relocation of items, and the chaos of people moving in all directions when you are trying to cope with it.

My TESCO is too far with no transport, too expensive on the bus £1.50 one way to justify one shopping basket full. (The small town Sainsbury is even worse) So about once or if I’m lucky twice a year I get a friend or a family member to take me in a car allowing me to do a big ‘emergency stock’ type of shop. In case the banking system or the DWP fuck up my money. Or I get ‘flu & can’t get out to shop.

So I asked my family member, while I fought the aisles, to go to the pharmacy for me….and buy me a supply of their own brand (1/3rd price of DIFLUCAN) FLUCONAZOLE- one to take before I restart natural supplements, a spare and two to put in the medicine cabinet-after all you never know when I may have a woman over for vigorous sex- a known hazard for gay women !!

So I wrote down the ‘speech’ for her to deliver to the TESCO Pharmacist. “ ….People with ME/CFS…..low immune system…..candida in the gut controversy that GP’s dismiss……if you take natural supplements, if you can’t afford the £17 for YEAST RAIDERS every month without fail, it works best to completely blitz your body first before you go back to supplements……….” THE TESCO PHARMACIST FLATLY REFUSED TO SELL MORE THAN ONE CAPSULE. Was is ignorance of ME/CFS ? If so then that is disgusting. Was it a God complex….you know, bit of power for someone too thick to do medicine…Was it the assumption that the sick or ‘disabled’ don’t /mustn’t have sex…Was it blatant discrimination……I THINK YES, YES, YES & YES….what else have I to go on ?

In fact the one GP -on This Morning- that I have heard accept the Candida thing…..recommends that the best dose to treat it in the gut is in fact ONE CAPSULE OF FLUCONAZOLE EACH WEEK FOR FOUR WEEKS, THEN CONTINUE WITH HERBAL SUPPLEMENTS/ PROBIOTICS……..

Stolen benefit ? How do I justify that statement…..well, if we can’t get a proper supply from a supermarket at under £5 a capsule, compared with the cost of branded DIFLUCAN at over £12. Then I’ll have to either struggle each time on the bus, putting it up to £8 each…a huge effort when you have ME/CFS….I want to use my energy to give me some quality of life - not waste it on that. Or traipse around a few Independents at £12 each.

Funny really that they are only too happy to sell you dozens of bags of crisps, no questions asked….that are sure to shorten your life, but get very precious if you want to improve it ! About time ME Association, Action for ME & Patricia Hewitt at the Department of ‘Health’ started kicking a few doors down with ignorant, discriminatory pharmacists.

People with diabetes, HIV/AIDS, cancer get repeat prescriptions for fluconazole avoiding the hassle, humiliation & inquisition……..but yet again, having ME/CFS we are treated like shit…..just another day in paradise !

Royal Mail To Scrap Street Collections ?

Royal Mail- Secret Plans To Scrap Street Post Boxes ?

If you have a Post Box near you, keep a close eye on it. My nearest pillar box clearly has a label professing that the 6.30pm collection is the latest in this area. All well and good. That is, unless you pop down at say 5.50pm to post your letter in good time for the 6.30pm last collection, and you will see the collection tag has been changed to say the next collection is the NEXT DAY. Now I’ve been keeping lookout and I know the tag on my post box is changed about an hour BEFORE THE LAST COLLECTION ACTUALLY HAPPENS…….result……..you may panic, assume you’ve missed today’s collection and start driving around or walking to the sorting office. Totally unnecessarily. You are being manipulated to destroy your own street postal collection.

You lose confidence in the ADVERTISED collection time, because every time you get there in good time you are lead to believe by the EARLY TAG CHANGE, you’ve missed it……….Result, your lack of trust means you go straight to the sorting office or you post your letter much earlier in the day……but guess what……that’s the idea. Less and less people trusting a collection will actually be made at 6.30pm –fewer use it. Justifying the Royal Mail plans to ditch the Post Box altogether.

If you notice this devious manipulation on your Post Box, get evidence, -digital photos are ideal as they have dates & times. Send them to POSTWATCH.

HSBC premier accounts-Alliance & Leicester beat you to it

HSBC “premier service” for Rich Only- No Alliance & Leicester beat you to it …A& L Basic Bank account holders are not permitted to use counter services unless a transaction is at least £250

Alliance & Leicester jumped on the Government Basic Bank Account bandwagon a couple of years ago when people like me were FORCED to have benefits paid into a bank account.

Alliance & Leicester were one of the few boasting you could make withdrawals at branches and Post Offices, and a local branch was near to me….., I opened two (the Government falsely implied different benefits can be paid to different accounts –mine’s made up of IS plus another bit as I’m long-term sick, written as if it is two different items, but apparently as it’s paid by the same office it’s only one)-the idea was to have part paid to one account and the much smaller amount paid separately as a little bit of savings/safety net in case of theft/mugging -)within months of the Government deadline for all benefits to be paid to banks, I had a letter from A&L saying that only customers PAYING IN OR WITHDRAWING £250 IN A SINGLE TRANSACTION WERE ABLE TO USE THE BRANCH COUNTER.

So being on benefit my only way to ‘save’ now is to collect my coins in bags & pay them in at a post office ….for which I now have to either walk 15mins to a small branch or stand in a queue(no seats) of about thirty people….and have the displeasure of being incompetently ‘served’ Post Office Counter Clerk Eddie the eejit ..who shows the Disability Awareness of a Dalek …more about him soon! Having ME/CFS, for me personally, if I can get out of bed and leave my home & face the stress of a Post Office visit, generally it is easier to walk further & have a shorter queue than have to be stood in a ten minute queue with smells & noises & people coughing all over me, then I have the lottery of staff who WILL NOT FOLLOW A CLEAR LIST that I’ve pre written as ME/CFS brain fog makes even asking for simple things very stressful. So much for Disability Awareness Training….Incidentally, that Post Office branch when I asked for the name & address of their Disability Awareness Training Officer looked at me blankly, and handed me a Guide To Postal Services.

Frankly, with Alliance & Leicester their service has been appalling. I wrote about the security registration saying I didn’t want internet or telephone banking as I don’t have a landline & I can’t cope with using phone calls but I was still forced to set up both. I tried to use a call box as it is more secure than a mobile (I was so stressed about having to do it I was self harming in the months and days before) but they refused. So I went into the branch and they told me I could sit in the foyer & set up my passwords etc over their phone. I complained to the branch employee that there was no privacy & customers all around. So the employee said…”well, when they answer the phone don’t tell them.” Obviously I did…so I was put in an office.

If I wasn’t so frightened about the mental distress of the hassle of trying to get my benefit paid by DWP into a different bank, I would do it tomorrow.

As luck would have it, a few months after this bombshell & appalling A&L ‘customer service’ someone from a market research Polling company knocked on my door to do a financial survey……oh how I enjoyed telling him where I bank, and that yes I would change in a heartbeat if I could cope with it and no, I would NEVER recommend them as a bank to anyone else.