Paranoid

This happened several months ago, but when I was cleaning out some files at home, I came across a little paper with some details of a phone conversation I had with a patient. 

A woman called to inform that she was being poisoned. I asked her why she felt this way. She explained that a medication she had been taking for years was suddenly causing her to feel weak and distressed. She couldn't really explain the exact symptoms she was having, but she adamantly insisted that she felt something was definitely wrong the day after she picked up the latest refill of her medication three days earlier. As she was talking, it became clear to me that she was sure the source of the "poison" was her prescription medication. She asked me who supplied our drugs and if there was any way that supplier knew that she was getting medications at our pharmacy. I wish I had a picture to show you the expression I had on my face at that moment. I did my best to assure her that the pharmacy's wholesaler was not involved in some kind of conspiracy to poison her. Then she wanted to know who the manufacturer of the medication was and if THEY knew she filled prescriptions at our pharmacy. I asked her why she thought someone would want to poison her. She responded, "I have no idea! That's what I'm trying to figure out, and that's why I called you!" Wow. After I convinced her that the manufacturer had no interest in poisoning random patients and that others who were taking the same tablets had reported no difficulty, she asked me if I knew whether or not the manufacturer had recently changed the "recipe" of the pills. The expression on my face became even more picture-worthy. She pleaded with me to call the manufacturer to ask them what they put in that particular lot of medication. I assured her I would call right away. (Yeah, right.) She made me promise that when I called them, however, that I not give them her name, because if they were trying to poison her, they'd know that she was on to them. I promised her complete discretion. I never called her back, and she never called me again. It would seem she really was being poisoned. Hmmm....