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Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much a collision of unfortunate events. We were at a work function until 2am in London and returned to our room to find it had been robbed. The thieves took his bag which contained his insulin kit.

So now it's 3am GMT and he can't reach his doctor in the States. We're supposed to leave at 8am for the flight home. No pharmacy is open and even if they were, they wouldn't help him. Nurses at Heathrow couldn't help him either.

So he decided to risk it and see if he could make it all the way home without having any trouble. He went into shock 4 hours into the flight.

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Actually, IIRC insulin is classified as a Pharmacy-Only medicine in the UK, rather than Prescription-Only, meaning that it can be sold by a pharmacist without requiring a prescription, to address exactly this sort of situation.

Even if they've reclassified it as a POM in the 25 years since I stopped doing that stuff for a living, if you could have found a pharmacy in the UK, then under the Emergency Sale and Supply regs the pharmacist could, on their own recognizance, dispense a sufficient supply of prescription-only meds to get the patient back home.

(Caveat: I am an ex-pharmacist. Any advice I could conceivably give you is over two decades past its sell-by date and needs checking.)

Edit Current emergency sale and supply regs are described here:

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/1011.aspx?CategoryID=73&SubC...

What is your favorite sci-fi story involving a pharmacist?

I don't think I've ever read one. And I'm not planning on writing one any time soon. (The professional life of a pharmacist is, ideally, extremely boring. If it isn't, someone's going to be very ill, if not dead.)

Ouch.

Were I ever to become diabetic (and manage to figure out my fear of needles), I'm pretty sure I'd carry around spare insulin, like an epi-pen.

(Is it something that can be carried around trivially? Or does it need to be refridgerated? You know what, maybe I'll just eat healthier.)

Insulin will last around 30 days unrefrigerated. Refrigerated, it lasts until the expiration date, which is years for the insulin I have.

That said, insulin is used to treat hyperglycemia, which is usually not an acute incident. "Diabetic shock" refers to hypoglycemia, in which the individual needs sugar to raise their blood sugar to normal levels.

> Were I ever to become diabetic (and manage to figure out my fear of needles)

You get over it pretty quick when it is literally life-or-death, trust me ;-)

FYI. There's a 24-hour pharmacy in Earl's Court in London (called Zaffash I think)

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