DEKALB COUNTY, Ga.,None — A DeKalb County woman says a mix-up by a Walmart pharmacist left her daughter hospitalized.
The woman, identified only as Sherri, said she and her 21-year-old daughter, Erica, went to the Walmart on Gresham Road to get medication to treat Erica's epileptic seizures. Instead, Sherri said the pharmacist gave them someone else's Metformin medication for diabetes. Sherri said the label on the bag was correct, but the pills were different.
"She said, ‘Mom, it looks like they’re generic. The manufacturer might have changed,’" Sherri told Channel 2’s Amy Napier Viteri.
Sherri said when she called Walmart, the pharmacist told her the pills wouldn't hurt her daughter. Erica said she immediately felt sick.
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"Throwing up. I don't feel good at all. Very cold," she told Napier Viteri.
Metformin's side effects can include flu-like symptoms, sleepiness and diarrhea. Erica said she also had a violent seizure, a condition her prescribed medication would have treated.
"Scary, very scary because at that time I didn't know if this medicine caused it or she just didn't get her seizure medicine in her system in time enough," Sherri said.
Walmart released a statement, expressing regret for the situation.
“While providing a customer with another customer’s prescription is a rare occurrence, even one is too many. In this individual case, this incident occurred despite our quality control measures, which we deeply regret. We take customer safety seriously and have reviewed this incident carefully to avoid a similar incident in the future," Walmart spokeswoman Kayla Whaling said.