PRINCE GEORGE, B.C. — A B.C. man was forced to convince his doctor and his girlfriend that he doesn’t have cancer after a mix-up with the province’s pharmacy system confused him with his dog.

It turned out that Rick Gillingham of Prince George does not have cancer, but his dog, Cooper, was taking the medication phenobarbital for canine epilepsy.

When Gillingham went to the local university hospital for a simple painkiller recently, the doctor started asking him questions about his cancer.

“I told him, ‘I don’t have cancer,’ and he kept telling me not to be coy, that nobody was within earshot, so it was all right to talk about it and he needed to know,” said Gillingham.

Gillingham’s girlfriend overheard the conversation from the waiting room, prompting her to storm in and demand to know why she was kept out of the loop.

“She was saying things like ‘They are professionals. They don’t make these kind of mistakes.’ And I really didn’t know what to tell her. I was at a loss for words.

As Gillingham attempted to convince his girlfriend that he wasn’t sick, the doctor finally revealed the source of the confusion.

“As we were yakking about it, the physician piped up and said, ‘Well, if you’re not the one taking the phenobarbital, who is?’” recalled Gillingham.

“And as soon as he said that, the light went on for her. It was for the dog, not for me. I didn’t even remember the name of the dog’s stuff, but she did and it all clicked.”

Cooper’s veterinarian had prescribed phenobarbital to ease the animal’s canine epilepsy.

But when the dog’s medication was entered into the province-wide PharmaNet system, there was nothing to indicate that Gillingham and his dog were not the same person — or even the same species.

Adding to the confusion, the vet’s name is identical to that of a well-known cancer specialist.

“It would probably not have been harmful (if Gillingham took the dog’s drugs), but if someone else had this happen, it could be life-threatening,” said his girlfriend, Charlaine MacGillivray.

“There should be some way of knowing the difference at a glance between human medication and animal meds. This is scary stuff.”

Bob Nakagawa, an assistant deputy minister in the province’s Health Ministry, said his department asked the College of Pharmacists of B.C. to investigate what happened.

The college found the entry for the dog’s medication incorrectly listed pharmacist listed as the prescriber, rather than the veterinarian, causing the drug to show up under Gillingham’s medication history.

“This can have significant patient safety issues,” said Nakagawa.

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“The pharmacist is now fully aware that prescriptions for pets should not be processed under a prescriber other than a veterinarian.”

The Canadian Press

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