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to a phone call with the doctor. The decision to be made was between the patient's ability to pay the price or the doctor's willingness to change the prescription to something else that was covered. It felt to me as if the insurance companies were writing the prescriptions.

I began to feel like scum. I was working in an industry shackled by powers outside our control. It was extremely frightening to see them exercise control over the doctors.

Decisions about changing prescriptions were hard enough for the educated and privileged class who frequented our stores. But, there so many of our clients who were unable to pay for life-improving or life-sustaining drugs and went with out.

The worst experience came each time an elderly woman would ask for her medications and for her husband's medications. Upon discovering that she had only enough money to buy one order and not the other - she would do without. And her bag of medicine would sit on our shelf until being returned to stock. The scenario would repeat itself month after month as we witnessed the suffering and shame.

Some patients would lower their quality of life to the point that they lived on peanut butter and canned tuna (or cat food) - day in and day out - in order to afford their drugs.

I rang up a sale for a prescription customer one day. She had a case of cat food to ring with her order. Being a cat lover, I asked her to tell me about her cat. She hadn't any. These cans would provide her dinner for the coming week. There was nothing I could do.

I could not handle being "on the front lines" of the cost of drugs war any longer.

Pharmacy Technician is a great title and an honorable certification.

I cannot recommend it for the soft-hearted.

Learn more about this author, Sharon Cohen.
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