“I took my dental plate out one night and put it in a safe place. That safe place? I cannot find it.”
The tablets were olanzapine, an antipsychotic medication prescribed for mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Possible side effects include drowsiness, dizziness, increased appetite, sweating, high temperature, confusion and disorientation.
He said the next time he went to pick up his monthly prescription, the tablets were not in the bag.
After going to the Whanganui Hospital the next day, he was prescribed three more tablets “to carry me over to Monday until I could see my GP”.
“I got charged $68 [at Whanganui Accident and Medical] and they didn’t verify my age and hospital number.
“When I did see my GP, he just said ‘You’re not meant to be on those tablets’.
“That’s when everything became apparent.”
The man said the original bottle must have been sent to the wrong pharmacy from Whanganui Hospital’s mental health and addiction department.
There is an age gap of 24 years between him and his son, and they have different addresses.
They have the same first and last names and share one middle name. The son has two middle names.
In a statement, Health NZ Te Whatu Ora group director of operations for Whanganui, Katherine Fraser-Chapple, said after the man’s son was seen at Whanganui Hospital, “a prescription was correctly written for him and sent to a pharmacy”.
His father then collected the medication and began taking it, she said.
Fraser-Chapple said an investigation into the incident would be conducted, and the man had been contacted “to inform him that we are looking into how this happened and will do everything we can to make sure it does not happen again”.
The man said he hoped to have his $68 fee refunded.
“Things started getting back to normal after I stopped taking [the tablets] but life was a real s*** sandwich for that month,” he said.
“I was doing uncharacteristic things.”
This story has been updated to show the $68 fee was charged by Whanganui Accident and Medical which is on the Whanganui Hospital site but is not part of Health NZ.
Mike Tweed is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily Whanganui District Council.
