PORTSMOUTH, Va. - With a fractured spine and an aching neck, the last thing one Portsmouth man wanted to deal with was getting the wrong medication for his ailments.
But that is what Travis Wysong says happened to him after he went to the Walgreens on the corner of Frederick Blvd. and Airline Blvd. in Portsmouth to pick up his prescriptions on Tuesday.
“I’m hurting right now,” Wysong told News 3’s Merris Badcock. “I was scared, and i did not know if i was going to have an adverse reaction to it.”
Travis Wysong talks to News 3's Merris Badcock about claims that he received the wrong medication from a local Walgreens.
According to Wysong, when he went to Walgreens to pick up his medications, he did not notice anything was wrong, because the information on the outside of the bag was correct.
“I was hurting pretty bad that morning, so I got in the car, opened the bag, and I took one of each. There were two different prescriptions.”
However, when Wysong got home he started to feel uncomfortable.
“I was feeling clammy and kind of sweaty.”
When Wysong looked at the medication bottles again, he saw another person’s name and different medication labels on the outside of the bottle.
“I did not know if I was going to be allergic to this, or have an adverse reaction…I was scared,” Wysong said.
Wysong rushed back to Walgreens and told them what had happened. He says they exchange the medication right away and told him to go to the emergency room if his symptoms worsened.
Now, he is sharing his story in the hopes of stopping this kind of mistake before it happens to someone else.
“I am an electrical supervisor,” Wysong explanted. “I have several guys under me. If we make a mistake, it could definitely be deadly right away. I understand people are human and they make mistakes, but it is possible this could have been a deadly mistake.”
Wysong told News 3 he does not think he will return to that particular Walgreens to get his medication in the future.
“I don’t think so,” Wysong said, with a nervous laugh.
Wysong provided News 3 with photos of the wrong medications, but we chose not to air them because another patient’s information is visible on the label.
In a statement to News 3, Walgreens says,
“Cases like this are rare and we take them very seriously. In the event there is an error with a prescription, our first concern is for the patient's well-being. We’re sorry this occurred and have apologized to the patient.
“We have a multi-step prescription filling process with numerous safety checks in each step to reduce the chance of human error and have reviewed the process with our pharmacy staff. We encourage patients to check with our pharmacists or their health care provider if they have a question or concern about their medications. We will investigate what happened and work to prevent it from happening again.”
