Peoples Pharmacy

Peoples pharmacy was once an expensive but well stocked place with very helpful staff. A couple of years ago I accompanied my sister to the North Austin store at Lakeline. She consulted with a staff member about what she might do for her migraine headaches. The person spent atleast fifteen minutes with her and was very helpful, and my sister bought several products, and I've heard no more about the headaches; I guess they helped.



However, today, I both visited the store on North Lamar, and phoned the store at Lakeline. At North Lamar, the consultant was rude and brusque. I needed a natural estrogen vaginal product for post-menopausal atrophic vaginitis, which affects something like 30% of all post menopausal women. The woman refused to discuss anything on the shelf, told me I needed to talk to the pharmacist about prescription products, then pretty much took a product out of the refrigerator in her office and threw it at me. She wouldn't tell me how much estrogen it has in it. Eventually she did throw two numbers at me - and at home when I got online I learned that she got the amount of estrogen in the strength I took wrong. It contains 2 mg not 3 mg. What is more, the usual dose of estriol for this problem is 1/2 mg a day, not 3 mg a day. She wouldn't discuss possible alternatives to hormone therapy.



When I phoned the North Austin store, the person who answered the phone insisted she was only allowed to spend 7 minutes on the phone with me, but wasted much of it refusing to answer my questions, failing to know the answer to my questions, asking me if I am taking fish oil and vitamin D, telling me to take herbs I'm allergic to, and telling me to go to some sort of alternative medical school because what I really need is acupuncture. Neither she nor the manager I talked with had a clue what was in any product; the one product they recommended to me turned out to contain progesterone instead of estrogen.