8 replies to this topic

[CallMeLucky]

Last night when I went to take my pill, I noticed it felt rough and brittle, which is strange because it is usually very smooth.  I looked at it closely and noticed a hair-line crack around the entire tablet, kind of looked like a crack in an egg shell.  I went and looked at other pills in the bottle and there were about 6 of them that had this crack, the others looked ok.

I'm going to put a call in to Novartis and ask them if they are ok to take or if they need to be replaced.

Anyone else ever see this happen with their pills?

[rct]

When first doing this stuff, had some funky looking pills.  Caremark/Medco/Accredo, whatever they were calling themselves, delivering them mid summer blazing sun 100+ degrees outside leaving them on the front porch, which is fine.  But we kinda struggled with them to at least put them in some kind of foil or something.  Ended up getting them shipped in a little cooler with some ice blocks and stuff.  So if you gets yer Gleevec from them folks, and it is in a nice temperature controlled thingy, I am glad, because I spent considerable time sorta barking at them about it.

So it might be temperature changes causing that funny look to them.  We sent them back when that happened.  They were not at all happy, and that's probably why they have pretty much kept up with the season changes.  At least for us they have.

rct

[CallMeLucky]

As a follow up in case this happens with anyone else, I spoke with pharmacy (Curascript) and they said there is no problem with taking the pills, that a crack of this nature is just the outside coating and it won't impact efficacy, they said it may be something that happened during shipping.

I also put in a call to Novartis and they said they would replace the damaged pills.

So I guess to be on the safe side I will get the replacements and go with those and put the broken ones off on the side.  If I run out down the road I can keep them as spares, but I think I would feel better taking unaltered ones since the comapny is willing to replace them.

Regards....

[Happycat]

Might be a formulation problem with the coating they used for that batch.  Sounds like it didn't bind well to the pill.  I'm getting my refill tomorrow, will look them over carefully!

Traci

[GerryL]

The outside coating makes them easier to swallow - I think Trey mentioned something about the taste of the Gleevec, when it was cut in half as being something similar to sharts.

Gerry

[Susan61]

I think your doing the right thing.  I would not fool around with a pill that did not look right,especially our TKI's.  I am also on Gleevec, and mine do get shipped to me in a styrofoam box with ice packs in it during the summer months.  I am on Gleevec 10 years now, and I never saw any  weird pill in my batch.

I do not think I would even save them, as long as Novartis is sending you new ones.  I will have to start paying more attention to my medications.

Susan 61

[Marnie]

The pills are probably fine.  It's o.k. to split Gleevec, though the inner pill does taste pretty bad. . .I can attest to that from when I was splitting my 400 mg pill.  That said. . .when you (or your insurance company) is paying that much for something, I would certainly want a pill that wasn't abnormal looking.  Sprycel makes me more nervous, because it can't be split, and it doesn't have any kind of a coating, or at least not one that I can see.

Marnie

[CallMeLucky]

BTW - as a follow up to this.  Novartis was very cool about it.  Although only a few pills were damaged, they replaced it with an entire bottle.  Nice they showed such good customer service, especially considering how much we pay.  They did have me send the damaged ones to them.  I guess they'll study them and see what went wrong with them.

[gunner]

The split is caused by the pill swelling up from a bit of humidity. It happens to mine on a regular basis.