Man Falls Ill After Allegedly Receiving Wrong Prescription

Call it just what the doctor hadn’t ordered!

An alleged mix-up at one Northeast El Paso pharmacy gave a man the scare of his life. Now, the pharmacy is apologizing, but it still isn’t enough for a couple looking for answers.

That couple says their problems all began a little more than a month ago at the drive-thru pharmacy of the Walgreens on Kenworthy.

Jesse Anderson feels much better now, playing with his dog and back to work after a scare he says sidetracked him and his wife. “(I) started feeling light-headed, started feeling dizzy, headaches, blurred vision,” says Jesse.

That’s because according to him, he was given the wrong medicine from a pharmacist at that Walgreens. Instead of taking Tramadol, a painkiller for a toothache, he ended up taking several doses of Triamterene, a medicine commonly used to treat high blood pressure.

“I was kind of devastated; I was like, ‘you gotta be kidding me’,” says Jesse.

No joke here…a couple of days after falling ill, his wife, who had gone to get her husband’s meds, got a phone message saying the wrong prescription had been filled.

It was that phone call from managers at the pharmacy that caused the family to grow concerned and then frustrated.

“I had gotten a phone call from the head pharmacist saying it was a mistake…the wrong prescription was given to us. He says, ‘has he seen a doctor?’…I said no…he goes, ‘well…maybe he should’,” says Betsy, Jesse’s wife.

A spokesman for Walgreens told ABC-7, “We are sorry this occurred and have apologized to the family. We are currently working with them to resolve this matter.”

However, the Andersons say that’s not the case. They’re coming forward with their story because, according to them, nothing has been done about the mix-up.

“When someone violates that trust, it just sends your whole world into a spin,” says Jesse.

The Andersons say they aren’t planning on suing Walgreens, but they do want an explanation of what happened.

And they do say they won’t be filling any prescriptions there anytime soon.