A heartbreaking incident has left a mother in Las Vegas grieving the loss of her twin unborn babies. This devastating loss occurred due to a tragic error at a CVS, where a pharmacist mistakenly gave her a drug known to cause abortions.
Timika Thomas, a mother of four, in 2019 decided together with her husband to expand their family. However, as she entered her thirties, Timika faced difficulties getting pregnant due to two ectopic pregnancies, resulting in the removal of her fallopian tubes. Despite lacking insurance coverage, the couple made the courageous decision to pursue costly in vitro fertilization (IVF).
After doctors sedated Thomas and implanted two eggs into her body, they provided her with prescriptions. One of these prescriptions was designed to stimulate hormone production and initiate her pregnancy, as reported by KTSM El Paso.
A doctor prescribed her a vaginal suppository in place of the previous injections she took by injecting. Thomas went to her CVS brand North Las Vegas and, at some point, took two of her required doses. But quickly, she knew something was wrong.
“I started cramping really bad,” Thomas told 8 News Now.
No stranger to the IVF process, she expected cramping, but this was not the pain she anticipated.
“My cramping went beyond that,” she said. “It was extreme. It was painful.”
Thomas checked the bottle and looked up the name of the prescription on the label that said the medicine was used for abortions.
Documents obtained by the 8 News Now Investigators detailed how two technicians and two pharmacists made a list of errors, which essentially terminated Thomas’ pregnancy.
“They just killed my baby,” she said to herself at the time. “Both my babies, because I transferred two embryos.”
Apparently, one technician thought she knew the generic name for the brand prescribed by the doctor but had entered the wrong name into the prescription. Another did not catch the error, and another pharmacist failed to counsel Thomas when she came to pick up her medication.
“It [the error] would have been caught because then they would have had to have the medicine in their hand,” Thomas said. “And they would have said, ‘Oh, this is Misoprostol or Cytotek, have you taken this before?’ And I would have said ‘no.’ ”
Thomas lodged a complaint with the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy. After she gave heartbreaking testimony about her horrifying experience, the two pharmacists were fined and had their licenses suspended provisionally.
If both pharmacists avoid disciplinary action over the next 12 months, pay fines and take continuing education credits, their licenses will be reinstated, the outlet reported.
CVS released a statement on the incident, saying:
“We’ve apologized to our patient for the prescription incident that occurred in 2019 and have cooperated with the Nevada Board of Pharmacy in this matter. The health and well-being of our patients is our number one priority and we have comprehensive policies and procedures in place to support prescription safety. Prescription errors are very rare, but if one does occur, we take steps to learn from it in order to continuously improve quality and patient safety.”
The pharmacy board fined CVS the maximum amount allowed by statute — $10,000.00 – for its vicarious liability for the pharmacists’ errors.
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