Drug shortages

Five years ago I wouldn't have been able to tell you what is Mucomyst let alone Acetylcysteine. These two drugs have one purpose to thin mucus so it may be coughed up. It is a very important drug for anyone with Cystic Fibrosis. Right now, there is a nation-wide shortage of this ever so important drug. Mycomyst is the original drug, but it is no longer manufactured. The remaining drug Acetylcysteine is manufactured by three companies. One of those companies is having manufacturing contamination problems. So now it is down to two manufacturers and they can not keep up with the additional demand.

Alex takes Acetylcysteine daily to help prevent build up of mucus. He takes it more than once a day when he is sick. To this point, we have just taken it for granted that it was available. The biggest problem we've had was that they want to give it to us in 30 ml bottles, but he only takes 2ml per day and the bottle only lasts 4 days so we end up throwing out medicine when we have a 30 ml bottle. Now, I'm lucky if I can find it in any size bottle. I didn't even know there was a problem until last month when I went to pick up his refill from Walgreens. They didn't even bother to let me know about the backorder until I showed up. They just had their automated system call me and tell me there had been a delay in one of the medications. Then when I showed up, the pharmacist just stated it so matter of factly that it was on back order until at least July. Uh, no. He needs this every day, and we are low. After a little convincing, she called another pharmacy and found it. But when I showed up to pick it up, they only had 30 ml bottles, that would only last us 2 weeks. This pharmacist was much faster to react. She called around until she found the right medication for my son. Walgreens just lost a customer. Unfortunately, the pharmacy that had the drug was closing, but they would have it for me the next day. It took 3 pharmacies and a few hours to get the Acetylcysteine last month, and that was only a one month supply.