I made myself a barbiturate-laden glass of Kool-Aid and waited patiently for the UFO to come into beaming range. It was Rapture Eve, after all, and how else would you expect me to celebrate it? I waited patiently for the ascendency…and waited…and waited some more. The next thing I knew it was Sunday. Rapture Claus wouldn’t be coming this year. I guess I shouldn’t have taken that loan with Louie the Fish that I promised to pay back tomorrow. It’s time to go sleep the Kool-Aid off. Better luck 21Dec2012. It will then be the Mayans’ stab at the Apocalypse.

Actually, I spent the “Rapture” hours on stage with The Forgiven Band at a Brazilian Pentecostal in Taylor. To say that it was a lively crowd was an understatement. These are the people that brought you Carnival, and they were on fire for Christ that night. Maybe some people there were hoping the Rapture would come. I mean, what a way to go out.
Praising your Savior with a rocking band and then having said Savior come down and tell you that it was time to get out of the pool. Amazing.

I did not believe for one second that The End of Days was going to occur this May. Some idiot pastor, whose name doesn’t deserve mentioning, devised his own cockamamie translation of the New Testament and was looking for a little publicity—and money. I haven’t even looked to see what his post-Apocalyptic commentary was. It’s not worth my time. He had followers suckered into giving away their life savings. What are those people going to do when they have to go to work (provided they didn’t quit their job) on Monday?

If you were the guy on WNEP-TV hailing Revelation incarnate on Friday, you are officially the new Old Coot of Old Forge. (I wonder which pizza he picked for his last meal. I’d pick Revello’s). How do you deal with what I’m sure are the relentless jibes, sir?

I hereby make a motion to make Rapture Eve a national Holiday. Once a year we should spend a day like it is going to be our last. Cheesecake would be involved in many phases of my last day. Ice cream too. Just in case there is no food in Heaven, I’d throw a Pagan Feast. I’d hang out with my family and eat to the point of vomiting. Actually, that is pretty much my description of our Christmas Eve and every other holiday that my family celebrates. August 10th seems like a good day to celebrate it. There is no national holiday in August. It’s time we give it one. Also, my selection of date for Rapture Eve has absolutely nothing to do with the occurrence of my 40th birthday. Nothing at all.

I guess the message of this whole thing is that you should live a part of every day like it may be your last. One day you are going to be right. Peace.

Jay Sochoka, R.Ph. is not going anywhere for a while

Tags: Jay's Column

Rx 16May2011

Running an independent pharmacy is really tough to do in this day and age. The Medicine Shoppe in Moscow, PA, just became its latest casualty. In all seriousness, that saddens me. Even though I work for the independent-killing corporate chain, I was rooting for them.

In my mind, I want my own pharmacy…until another independent red inks itself into oblivion. For now, though, it’s my gig at Casa Rite Aid, and let me tell you that I love my job. This is a job where it is good to be obsessive/compulsive, which I tend to be when it comes to the 12-hour shift. I literally lose sleep over the work I do. Once, when I was a rookie, I woke up out of a sound sleep, realizing I had made a mistake. I panicked until 9 a.m. the next morning and was rejoicing to find the error-laden script still in the bin.

Speaking of mistakes…they happen. There is a sense of absolute dread in my stomach when I find out we made a mistake. We REALLY hate when that happens. I have the best staff I have ever worked with and if I didn’t find an error that day, I feel like I missed something.

Fortunately (and I am profusely knocking on wood right now), I haven’t had a prescription comeback with my initials on it, that was filled incorrectly, for a long time. Like I said, I obsess. I check each part of the script three times before I OK it. Michelle (my partner) is also quite thorough. I have the utmost confidence in her abilities.

That doesn’t mean that mistakes won’t happen. With our massive acquisition of the majority of the Medicine Shoppe scripts, we will probably be filling 400 Rx’s every 12-hour shift. We filled 482 one day, so I know Michelle, my techs, and I can handle the pace. However, I ask you to always be proactive in your medical care. We are human back there, and therefore we make mistakes. Check your prescription bottle carefully. Make sure your name is on it, make sure it is the drug you are supposed to be taking, that it is the right one and the proper strength. Make sure that the directions sound familiar, and that the tablet description data matches the imprint marking on the tablet. (That information is on the lower left hand side of our label). If something seems wrong, please speak up. Your life may literally depend on it.

The bottom line is this: my staff and I welcome you to the Rite Aid pharmacy in Covington Twp. We invite your into our home away from home, and we want to help you. (One small request: please refrain from talking on your cell phones when you are interacting with us. It’s rude, and we are worth more than half of your time. I know that you wouldn’t do that to your doctor.) Peace.

Jay Sochoka, R.Ph. is only human.

Tags: Jay's Column

Rx 6May2011

I have a question for Big Pharma. If a cancer gene vaccination was discovered, would you tell anyone or are the treatments too lucrative?  With a monthly bill ranging from $850 to $3,600, times the 1.4 million new cancer diagnoses, along with current survivors, puts the profits somewhere in the bazillion-dollar range. It is no wonder why the executive washrooms have gold plated faucets, marble out the wazoo, and a bathroom attendant that will wipe your bottom if you ask him to.

Is helping the world eradicate disease or building an indoor ice rink on your sprawl more important? In 2000, Merck had a profit of 6.8 billion. In 2010, the number was 6.5 billion…in the fourth quarter alone. Think of a billion. That is 1000 million. Imagine having 24 of those 1000 millions in your corporate bank account.

In the first quarter of 2010, our friends at British Petroleum made $6.1B. That’s right; during a quarter of the same fiscal year, Merck made more than BP. I realize that drugs are expensive to make, but when you cover the running expenses and gaggles of top dollar salaries, and still have 6500 million of those dollars laying around every three months, that seems like a bit of a gouge to me.

I actually think that Big Pharma would release the cure. They would just charge the cost of the most expensive cancer chemotherapy going over a five-year survival period. I guarantee you it would be that expensive. We don’t want to have to let the bathroom attendant go. He has a wife and kid to feed.

Big Pharma must be taking a hit though. The drug rep bribes are much smaller than they used to be. I haven’t eaten a sandwich courtesy of a drug rep in seven years, and the pharmacy is forced to buy the Post-It notes we write on and the pens that you steal.

The most shameless trick of Big Pharma is taking two drugs that already exist and combining them into one dosage form creating a new National Drug Code. Create a new NDC and you have about seven years to get every penny you can out of disease-ridden society. Two drugs that cost about a dollar a pill, total, are now put in one tablet that costs six bucks. Insurance companies that cover such atrocities issue a copay that is more expensive than the two old drugs combined. Some docs write for the more expensive stuff. If the cost difference is outrageous, I call the doc and get the patient put on the two separate drugs. Some physicians sitting atop Clydesdales will tell you that patient compliance is increased when there is only one dosage form, even at the expense of the patient eating a cat food hoagie and to leave it alone. Buying a five-dollar pill reminder and putting two tablets in the slot instead of one is apparently too much work for the general population. I could tell you this, the one thing I don’t need after 22 years in the business is a patient compliance lecture. I GIVE patient compliance lectures. Peace.

Jay Sochoka, R.Ph. just became ineligible to work for Big Pharma. He could care less.

Tags: Jay's Column

Rx 3May2011

May 1, 2011, proved to be one of those days that I will never forget where I was when I heard the news. My wife was reading Facebook around 10:35 p.m. when she saw a post from a friend that said something to the effect of “President to address the US at 10:45. (bin Laden?)” Immediately we turned on MSNBC. Mike Viquera (one of their White House correspondents and certainly not their regular Sunday help) was holding his ear piece asking an unseen producer, “Can I say this has something to do  with something going on overseas?” at regular volume, so in fact he just said, “This has something to do with something going on overseas.”

Suddenly an NBC news report broke in on MSNBC coverage. This was serious indeed. David Gregory came on in rather serious lighting and scooped the White House by confirming sources that Osama bin Laden had been killed by  U.S. Special Forces (Navy Seal Team 6 had yet to be identified). I felt such a sense of satisfaction, that I immediately fell asleep and missed President Obama’s speech on the matter. I wouldn’t hear or see another word of it until the next morning when I listened to WILK and grabbed the morning paper. What I saw next I could not believe.

“Check that out,” my wife said, “Pope John Paul II was beatified the same day Osama bin Laden was killed.” I thought about that for a second. The living Satan of our time was destroyed on the day that the living Saint of our time got one step closer to actual sainthood.  The Lord’s message was clear. In the end, Good will triumph over Evil. Adolph Hitler was killed on the same day in 1945.  It is just too much coincidence to not have that message learned here.

Part of me actually feels bad for Mr. bin Laden. He is one of God’s children as well; one of His creations. Osama loved God. He was willing to kill 3,000 people in his name on 9/11. It was just his ultra-distorted view of the Quran that made him feel this is what the God of Abraham (our God) wanted from him. The dancing in the streets over his death was kind of ghoulish to me. I’m not saying that he didn’t get his comeuppance. He had to go, and I will not lose a wink of sleep knowing that he was unarmed when a bullet passed through him.

To his radical followers, he is now a saint. He died a martyr, and martyrs will be remembered for their “wonderful” acts by their devoted followers forever. So, in his afterlife, Osama is being rewarded with 72 virgins. What Mohammed didn’t tell him was that the 72 virgins were a bunch of Dungeons and Dragons playing, Vulcan ear wearing, 40-year old, living-with-their-parents male nerds. Thank you for that visual, Seth McFarlane. Peace.

Jay Sochoka R.Ph. is proud to be an American and cannot thank the US Armed Forces enough for what they do.

Tags: Jay's Column

Rx 10Apr2011

“If you want any longevity out of that hip, you’ll give up running.”

My chiropractor and good friend Antony Graham said those words to me after listening to the cracking in my left hip. It was no surprise. Something is going on in there that is going to progressively deteriorate until it will one day be replaced, provided I make it that long.

I felt disappointed and relieved about this. Running did, and still does in the public eye, define who I am. People would walk up to the pharmacy counter knowing my exact time and place in the Steamtown Marathon. In essence, I had fans. A patient actually had me autograph a prescription bag for them. I’ll never forget that one.

I’m disappointed, because I wanted to be one of those old-fart marathoners who still finish in under four hours. I’m relieved, because I never have to train that hard again. Marathon training requires an amount of time that can make your kid feel like an orphan. A fellow runner of mine greeted my wife at a post-race party by saying, “So you’re the widow, huh?”

“You can stop. You have nothing to prove.”

The Doc had a real point there. My wife also has made this same point. On April 16, 2007, I ran with the best runners in the world in the Boston Marathon. It was the apex of my running career when I qualified in the 2006 Steamtown. It actually felt better than finishing my first one, ten “blink-of-an-eye” years ago.

So will I stop running completely? Doubtful. Every time I go for a hike, I always sneak some running into it. Eventually it evolves into a full run. I’ll probably cap myself at seven miles a day but will more likely keep it in the four to five mile area. I’d like to keep my hip for as long as I could have it.

I have a nice bicycle that I’d like to use more, but I have a legitimate fear of getting slammed from behind by a texting driver. I have heard too many stories of runners turned cyclists who get killed in just that scenario. Getting hit by a car going 60 miles an hour makes a helmet purely ceremonial. It may help keep your face pretty so you look good in the casket, but that is about it.

I now take pride in other things. I take a lot of pride in my son, Julian. He is a success in school, music, and running. I say keep an eye on my kid, because he’s going to wind up really doing something. I’m standing by that statement.

While not meeting the fate of Barbaro, my days of competitive long-distance running are over. I’m okay with that. Just put me out to pasture and let me plod along for a couple miles here and there. I’ll have a lot of fun passing the torch too. Peace.

Jay Sochoka, R.Ph. is going to enjoy retirement…eventually.

Tags: Jay's Column

Rx 5Apr2011

When heroin addicts tell you that bath salts are bad news and that they would never do them, the FDA may want to consider banning them nationwide. Scranton first and then Lackawanna County are ahead of the curve by making the sale of these vials of chemical nastiness illegal. Notice I said the sale of bath salts. Possession of them is still all good in the eyes of the law. Nothing is stopping a user from driving to Luzerne County, buying the junk, and going back home to party on it.

There are actually two types of bath salts. One mimics methamphetamine and the other Ecstasy, which, for the uneducated, is a speed-meets-acid kind of trip. Essentially, for $50 a gram, you can give yourself all of the hallucinations, rage, disinhibitions, and paranoia that a body can endure. You can then feel free to drive around high with your kid in the car, assault your spouse, or bludgeon a priest to your heart’s content. (All three have been documented occurrences of people acting on bath salts). Why anybody would consider this type of high a good time is beyond me.

The question that arises most commonly is, “How can these grievous substances be legal?” It really is an example of bureaucracy and good marketing at its finest. The compounds are not scheduled by the FDA because they are so new. They are also not marketed for human ingestion; they are meant (wink, wink) to be put in a tub of water to providing a soothing soak. What I described in the previous paragraph is a completely unlabeled use.

I guarantee you that the company making the stuff couldn’t care less how it is being used. Big Tobacco doesn’t care if you smoke yourself into a grave, so why should the bath salts companies care if your snort or shoot yourself into one. It comes down to one thing in Corporate America: profits.  The size of the monkey you are putting on your back is irrelevant.

If current bath salts molecules are banned, there are hundreds of other compounds ready to take their place. It would be easier to eradicate Al-Qaeda than it would be to get this stuff off the market. As my Dad would have said, “You’re shoveling manure against the ocean.”

So, if you can’t get rid of it, what can you do? Educating your children to stay the hell away from that garbage is a good place to start. Don’t be afraid to have the drug talk with your kid. If you don’t, someone else will, and, chances are, that conversation may not produce the kind of result you wanted.

The day your baby goes away to college, he or she will be given personal freedom and introduced to the world of substance imbibing. A little education on your part regarding what is a good idea and what isn’t will go a long way. Peace.

Jay Sochoka, R.Ph. is glad that Julian will be commuting to Marywood.

Tags: Jay's Column

Rx 30Mar2011

It was a typical 300-plus prescription Monday at work and a good one at that. We were fully staffed and people waiting for their scripts did not wait long at all Fifteen minutes? Most were gone in five. I felt pretty good about the day. That changed within thirty seconds of seeing my wife when I got home.

“Jay, Kerri Ajello died this morning.” I was stunned. “Oh, no!” was all I could say. I had known Kerri since first grade when we were in religious education together. I said something about how I felt about God. She turned to me and said, “I feel the same way.” I’ll never forget it.

We lost touch but reconnected in seventh grade when we went to the same middle school, rode the bus together, and both played clarinet in the band. In high school, she was one of my best friends. We saw each other every day in band, after school in marching band, hung out after school, and went out after football games to get something to eat.

I could write the entire column on the laughs we shared at this stromboli place called “Stuff Yer Face.” Along with two or three others, we would laugh ourselves silly on Friday nights. Kerri and I never dated. I just never saw her in that way. She set me up with a disaster of a girlfriend, but I never held it against her.

We lost touch after high school. I recall seeing her a few times over the past 21 years. I had hoped she would be at one of the three reunions since high school ended, but she never attended. I looked for her on Facebook, but she wasn’t there.

From what I heard, Kerri didn’t feel well around 4:30 a.m., and she called 911. When the paramedics arrived, she was unresponsive, but they brought her back. It didn’t last long. When she got to the hospital, she was not good, and they called her parents. By the time they got there, she was gone.

Her parents. They now know the most unspeakable of pains and have to bury their daughter. I pray every day that I die before Julian does, about 45 years from now. If he, God forbid, predeceases me, you can book me a padded room at First Hospital for the rest of my life. I think I would cry until the day I died. I am so sorry if you ever experienced that pain.

Although I hadn’t seen Kerri in about 20 years, it felt like a punch in the gut to lose her. I feel much more mortal than I did a week ago. I know I’ll see Kerri one day alive and well in the next life, but now the only thing I will see is her body in a casket with her inconsolable parents at her side. That hurts. A lot. Peace.

Jay Sochoka, R.Ph. misses his dear friend. Rest in peace, Kerri.

Tags: Jay's Column