Jo's Cafe

Back in December I ran into something I was totally unaware of.

There is an Armour Thyroid Shortage.

Its my own fault. I haven’t been on thyroid.about.com in years. Not since I stabilized on Armour Thyroid in 2001 and my life went back to as normal as it could be on that medication. Then my diabetes hit and I focused on that. (In that area too, I haven’t been to diabetes.about.com either in a long time).

So when I went to renew my script in mid-December – I was met with silence from Walgreen’s. Yes, my doctor’s office has been known to miss a renewal script faxed to them from the pharmacy, so I called them first thing that Monday morning. I needed it filled that day. I called the pharmacy after lunch when I still hadn’t been notified it was filled and was told the medication refill was for 180 tablets and they only had 150, and besides, “Armour has been discontinued.” I yelled at the gal that it wasn’t!!!! She put me on hold and came back to inform me she was wrong, it wasn’t discontinued, it was out of stock – country wide. I asked them to fill it with what they had left, I’d talk to me doctor at my next appointment.

When I went to get the script at lunch – I had one pill left at home. When I got there it wasn’t Armour Thyroid, but a generic brand for T-4 only. Hello people WTF? The pharmacist said the doctor’s office called back and changed it to what they filled it with. I told the pharmacists there was no way – because I have to have both T4 & T3 – the meds they filled it with wouldn’t cut it. Since it was lunch time, I had to wait until 2 pm to talk to my doctor.

I opted for a face-to-face with the office nurse. No, they didn’t call and change it and she called the pharmacy back right then and there. The pharmacists informed her he had put the remaining Armour on hold for me and he was going to fill it right then with her phone call. We are still not sure who changed it, but I have my suspicions it was Tricare. (Gotta love government health insurance making medical decisions for you, but we will all know about that soon enough).

While I was sitting in the office fuming about the pharmacy/doctor situation, I logged into thyroid.about.com and learned that Armour Thyroid, along with a lot of other natural thyroid medications were running low all across the country. It appears (from what I’ve read), when Forest Labs reformulated Armour a while back, a lot of patients reacted badly. I didn’t except for the nasty taste of it now. When these patients started having problems, their doctors put them on other natural thyroid meds and then the shortage started rolling. One natural medication after another started falling short and Forest Labs, for some unknown reason, had slowed down the production of their product. I don’t know if they ran out of stock of the natural product (the pig’s thyroid) or if their distributor had taken a hit by a radical muslim group trying to kill off all pigs; or PETA wanting to save them all, but the product was running low on all sizes.

Yes, there options available to me – synthetic T4 & T3 – but there are also compounding pharmacies (one close by me thankfully), that can make me a mix with natural thyroid medications.

Lesson learned. I need to check into both support boards more regular and I would have been better prepared for what happened. Fortunately, it all worked out this time. But in three months, will I be scrambling to refill my script? Only time will tell.

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