Like everywhere, the CVS pharmacy on 75th street in south Houston was paralyzed without electricity after Hurricane Beryl hit.
“We completely lost power. We didn’t have any power,” said pharmacy manager Cynthia Khatcherian.
It meant the pharmacy couldn’t document transactions of controlled substances, which meant Kevin and Ziyear of Pearland couldn’t access a medication they had filled at that pharmacy to control Ziyear’s seizures.
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“Without his medication, you know, his seizures will definitely continue,” Kevin explained. “We’ve tried to wean this medication, even in the small amounts and his his seizures just come back very rapidly. So, this was definitely medication that he needed to take.”
Ziyear has been battling seizures since he was 8-years-old.
He has Febrile infection-related epilepsy syndrome (FIRES), which means without medication his seizures will rapidly happen, one right after another, and during the hurricane Ziyear was dangerously close to that happening.
“Then we would have to rush him to the hospital,” explained Kevin. “I was like, we just need the medication as soon as possible, and she didn’t even need to know how desperate we needed the medication. She just immediately went into action.”
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Khatcherian was already coming up with a plan when she asked Kevin to return to the pharmacy the next day.
“On my way home, I remembered, what can I do? Can I call to call his doctor? What can I do to help this patient?” she explained. “With this class of medication it has to be taken at the same time, at the same day, every day, the patient cannot wait a couple hours to take the medication. It is really important for him to be compliant.”
In the nick of time, Khatcherian got what they all needed.
“I was on the phone with help desk trying to find a solution. Where can I locate it? How can I locate it? What can I do?” Khatcherian said. “I had to manually go through each waiting bin in the dark, try to find his medication. Luckily I found it and I was really happy... once I located it, I got permission to see if I can actually dispense the medication to the patient. Because, of course, with this class of medication, I need to see his ID and scan it in the system.”
She got permission to document Kevin’s information by pen and paper and Ziyear successfully got what he needed on time.
However, both Kevin and Ziyear know Khatcherian could have told them there was nothing else she could do and the store was closed.
“That wouldn’t align with what I learned at school and what CVS tells us to do. So we are here to help the patients despite when we don’t have power, despite what we’re going through, we’re always going to be trying our best to help patients,” Khatcherian said.
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“Since she went above and beyond, let me do what I need to show my appreciation, I stopped by the store, was able to get her a gift card, a thank you card and just, you know, just let her know how much I appreciated the steps that she took to give me the medication that he definitely needed,” Kevin said.
“It says ‘life is crammed with things to take care of, and still you make time to show you care.’ And as pharmacists, this is what we’re here for. We’re here to serve the community, to help the people,” Khatcherian said.
“The next time, we have a family trip planned, I’ll pick up our prescriptions early. When we left Houston, Beryl wasn’t forecasted to impact us so I thought I’d just pick up his medication when we got back. But Beryl hit and changed everything. I’m just so lucky to have people like Cynthia.” Kevin said.