Mother says local pharmacy gave her wrong pills for son who has autism

CARTERSVILLE, Ga. — A Cartersville mother has an important warning for others after she says a local CVS pharmacist filled her 13-year-old son's prescription with the wrong medicine.

Susanne Epps Jones told Channel 2's Alyssa Hyman that her son, Elijah, is on the autism spectrum and has been taking the same medicine for eight years.

“I was scared. I wanted to know how it was going to affect the other medications that he's been taking, what were the side effects. I didn’t know anything about the drug,” Epps Jones said.

Epps Jones said the pharmacist filled her son's prescription with medicine commonly used to treat Parkinson’s disease.

“I immediately took him to the emergency room,” Epps Jones said.

She told Hyman that fortunately, Elijah is OK and only had mild side effects.

Epps said when she picked up his prescription, she had no reason to think anything would be different.

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“I do take my responsibility. I should have inspected it more, but they looked the same size, shape and color. I didn't think anything of it,” Epps Jones said.

She told Hyman that the pills and the bottles were so similar, she didn't notice that it was the wrong prescription until four days later.

The directions on the bottles are the same, and the names of the medicines look similar.

“I trust my pharmacist to be filling the right prescription,” Epps Jones said.

Hyman contacted CVS to ask about the medication mix-up. A corporate spokesperson sent her a statement that said:

“When Ms. Jones notified our pharmacy about her son's prescription on Friday evening, our pharmacist apologized and attempted to contact the prescribing doctor, however the doctor's office was closed for the weekend.

“Our district leader has been in touch with Ms. Jones multiple times since the incident occurred to apologize, follow up on her son's health condition, and ensure that he receives the correct medication.

“Prescription errors are a very rare occurrence, but if one does happen, we do everything we can to learn from it in order to continuously improve quality and patient safety.” 

As for Epps Jones, she wants to remind everyone to check their medication.

“You get into a pattern after eight years of taking the same medicine every single month. I will now, from this day on, and we're changing pharmacies,” Epps Jones said.

Cox Media Group