Your local neighborhood pharmacy is a one-stop-for-all-your-health-needs institution. Last year, a law passed requiring a doctor’s prescription for many types of antibiotics and other stronger drugs. Before that, you could self-medicate with your choice of uppers, downers, painkillers and plain old antibiotics if you knew which pharmacy to frequent.
I knew a guy who walked into one with the word ‘clonazepam’ written on a piece of paper and told the person at the counter that he was a truck driver in the states, and this was prescribed it for his insomnia, and wouldn’t you know it, he was suffering from the same sleep issue here and could anyone help? They could. A few minutes after a brief consultation with the pharmacist, he walked out with a bottle of high potency valium.
My first experience with a pharmacy took place in a back room. I knew I wasn’t in the US anymore when the pharmacist led me behind the counter, closed the door, instructed me to drop my trousers, and injected me in the thigh with a shot of epinephrine ( better known as adrenaline).
The reason for the shot was that I had been hit with asthma so severe that every breath sounded like I had just tried to run to the top of Chirripo. I’d spent a sleepless Saturday night seated in a rocking chair as I was unable to breathe lying down. It was rainy season and I was living in a half finished cabina that provided little protection from the elements. A tropical front had arrived, the rain came down in torrents, wind howled off the nearby Fila Tinamastes, and I was no match for the elements.
Sunday morning I was driven to a pharmacy half an hour away. Every shallow wheezing breath felt like it could be the last. The jab of the pharmacist’s needle brought instant relief. I had received this same injection as a teen, for the same reason. There it was done by a doctor, and I still remembered the doctor’s instruction to remain seated for several minutes after the injection as there is risk of a sudden drop in blood pressure.
The pharmacist here gave me no such instruction. He was not a medical doctor after all, just a guy who could measure out the proper dosage and give an injection. I stayed put in the back room, puzzling the pharmacist. Many pharmacies now have a doctor on duty during business hours, in order to write the antibiotic or clonazepam prescription that is no longer available over the counter. Still, I am always surprised by what is available without a doctor.
A while back I pinched a nerve in my upper back and the pain ran from my neck down to the fingers on my left hand. I was about to leave for a visit stateside and needed relief. My stepson is an RN in the local hospital and he gave me a list for purchase from the pharmacy. I bought a syringe and several ampules of painkiller. My stepson injected me at home. No doctor or prescription necessary.
There remain smaller mom and pop pharmacies in Costa Rica that don’t have a doctor on duty but will prescribe medication based on your symptoms. They are worth finding if you trust your self-diagnoses and don’t feel the need for a middleman with MD after the last name. And those back rooms? They are still open if an injection is necessary.
