"I became interested in compounding when I was an undergrad at UT (The University of Texas at Austin). I was working at a pharmacy taking care of all my prerequisites to get into pharmacy school. And we would get scripts in and then send them to a compounding pharmacy down the street. I asked my boss one day, ‘Why aren’t we filling these prescriptions?’ and he said, ‘Oh those are compounds and we don’t do them.’ So one day I went down the street to check out the compounding pharmacy and I thought, ‘Hey, this is really cool.’ And so that was the first time compounding really peaked my interest.

And then in pharmacy school I went to U of H (University of Houston) College of Pharmacy and they have a relationship with PCCA. So I came through the Boot Camp course here and learned about compounds in the Training Lab and I realized that I really liked it. As school progressed and I started my rotations, I pursued compounding because I was always about supporting small, independent businesses and as I learned more about other areas of pharmacy it only solidified my passion for compounding."

"I started bringing Syd [to PCCA] when he was a puppy, about let’s see, he would have been 15 weeks old. I’m a visual learner so I brought him to help show our students — be it member or collegiate students — what some of the opportunities are when compounding for dogs.

Syd is passionate about coming to PCCA. He knows that when I put on certain clothes that I will be teaching and he gets all excited. He knows the routine. First they are animals, then they are pets, then they are family members. They have a great sense of understanding humans.

Syd has a sense of wanting to help further, and helping other animals too. He gives me ideas for compounding. When people ask, “What do you do?,” I say, “I’m a compounder,” and they think I must work at a bank because of compound interest. So I coined the phrase MacGyver of Medicine™. Syd helps me recognize things to be the MacGyver of Medicine for dogs. He helped me invent pupsicles, which are frozen popsicles for dogs that you can freeze medication in. In the summer time instead of using sugar and artificial color, I make a zinc manganese glucosamine beef flavor frozen pop. And I also have a patent that has really helped members that's for treating ear infections in dogs, which is the third biggest reason for an office visit for a dog.”

"What do I like most about working here? The culture. That's what attracted Kay and I to this place [back in the ‘80s]. The way we were treated as customers, and the way they treated each other — I just wanted to be a part of that.

The King brothers — Dale, Dean and Dan — pretty much ran this company. And they pounded [culture] into assurance. Treating others like you'd like to be treated and always doing what you say you'll do; those two things alone, while they're easy to say, sometimes they're hard to do. And I think those are the tenets of our culture."

"Compounding has always seemed like the super hero. It’s like ‘We’ve run out of options and we need a super hero to save the day,’ sort of thing. Because that’s how I’ve experienced compounding so far. It’s just cool how compounding finds a way to help patients when everything that is available to them hasn’t been working.

For my dream job, I think I want to be involved with companies or hospitals that I feel passionate about. I love the culture of Texas Children's Hospital and the culture here at PCCA and I see myself at a place where the culture is something I appreciate. There are definitely a lot of specialties within pharmacy, but at the core of what pharmacy does is a lot of counseling, knowledge about medications and helping people. So if I get to help people and be in a place that I love to work, that’s the dream."

“There's a couple niches within compounding pharmacy that I would like to specialize in, if not create myself. One of them is Ornithology (the scientific study of birds). I have a pet chicken named Queenie, whom I love very much, and she kind of guided me towards Ornithology. She's very hard to treat because she's a food animal, so veterinarians really can't help me out with her, at least at the moment. So I have to go back and do my own research and do weight-based dosing with aspirin for her arthritic knee. And now I'm actually having to go and treat some sores on the bottom of her feet from where she's stood on just one leg to avoid standing on her sore, little knee.

And that’s my favorite thing about compounding — that you can help patients that don't fit into the normal mold. It's very endearing to me. You can go home at the end of the day and it's rewarding to know you took care of somebody who really had no other options anymore. Also, the variety of different patients that you get to work with — animal patients, as well as all your different human patients…it's just special. That's what compounding is to me. It's very special.”

"My rotation in Arizona was a really awesome site for me to go to because it was outside of Houston and outside of Texas. It was actually out in the middle of nowhere on an Indian reservation called White River. I worked at a long-term care facility, so the Native Americans that were stricken with a lot of diseases and just had a lot of health problems would come there. Everybody knew everybody at White River because it was such a small reservation, so the relationships the patients had with the pharmacists were very unique and personalized. And I got to be part of that and got to experience just how good that was and how wonderful that could feel.
My most interesting case there was in pain management; the patient was experiencing severe pain that was hindering her from doing anything. Even getting out of bed in the mornings was very difficult for her. Her pain was in her back/lower back and was debilitating for her in day to day life. She went out to a bunch of different places just to see what the best therapy would be for her and she finally ended up at the hospital at White River.

The pharmacist was like, “Whoa, this is a different type of pain.” This is not just something that regular Tylenol or codeine can help with, this was neuropathic pain that was missed at all the other places she had visited. So we helped make her medicine more targeted and the patient got exactly what she needed, her pain was being controlled and she wasn’t in so much pain that she couldn’t be touched anymore. And that was really cool for me to see. The solution was focused on the patient and the patient got what she needed — to be able to function without extreme pain."

"I was fresh out of college and had moved back to Houston from Virginia. I was living at home and was searching for a career in my field of study. My mother, who worked for PCCA at the time, is how I first found out about PCCA. Although my background was in science, at the time PCCA only had an opening in Inside Sales. So I jumped on that opportunity and worked as an Inside Sales Representative for about a year. Even though sales was not my specialty, I felt that working in Sales was a great learning experience and taught me a lot about myself.

Now, what I do in QA and QC affects the end product and ultimately the patients whom our members serve. And I think this is true for everyone who works here in Operations. From point of receipt to distribution to shipping to our customers – everything we do here at PCCA ultimately affects patients’ well-being. I think that’s really important."

“Along with pharmacy and compounding, I really like writing short stories and poetry. I recently got published, actually. It was just one poem, so it wasn't a big deal or anything, but for me it meant a lot. I have no majors or minors in writing, so the fact that they took my poem was very flattering. It was published by Z Publishing and they highlight several emerging poets from different states.

I've loved writing my entire life, so I thought I wanted to be a writer, but I ended up in the pharmacy route and I’ve found that it’s something I am just as passionate about. I just feel like if you know what a person needs and you can help them feel better, then it's a good feeling. It's like, "I can give you what you need."

Whitney Andrews: So we met 31 years ago in a hospital. [laughter] I came out and said “What's up, Mom?”

Kathy Wingo: Yeah, in the hospital nursery. [laughter] So we’re mom and daughter. At PCCA, we work together a lot on PCCA’s Culture Committee.

WA: The Culture Committee has always been there — I think Kay Sparks really brought it on from the get go. PCCA’s leaders see the importance of it and without that, we wouldn't be able to do what we do today.

KW: Charity events fall under Culture Committee and the Fort Bend Women's Center is our corporate charity.

WA: We assist with events like Operation Angel at Christmas time, Santa's Workshop, a Back to School Breakfast and we’re a key sponsor at the annual Girlfriends Giggle event.

KW: There’s also the Measure Up Backpack Campaign, which is actually going on now. We do it during the back to school time and I love doing it. It's just fun because you can donate supplies and volunteer at the event. You get to meet some of the kids there and you help them shop for their school supplies. It’s nice because you actually get to interact with them. I love that I can work full-time and still give back to my community and have opportunities to make a difference.

On the latest episode of The Mortar & Pestle, PCCA member Saad Dinno of Acton Pharmacy shares what compounding means to him. Here’s a sneak peek — listen to the full episode at bit.ly/mp-episode6 or wherever you listen to podcasts.

“There was a one-and-a-half year old Leukemia patient, newly diagnosed, at Boston Children's Hospital, but she was getting treatment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The mom and the dad, every week, had to go in to get the medicine that was being compounded at the pharmacy. So the mom came to us — this was in 2003, 2002 — and the mom said, “We have a one-and-a-half year old girl with Leukemia, and we need this medicine. Can you compound it?” And I said yeah, sure, let me look into it for you, just give me a couple of hours. Of course, I called Dana-Farber first, then I called PCCA second, the [Pharmacy] Consulting Department, and I said I have this little girl that needs this medicine. Well, there was a formula in the PCCA Formula Database, so I took a look at it, we made some adjustments due to her age and such, and the mom came in two days later and picked up the medicine. And she said, “You don’t understand what this has done. Because you’re able to do this, I can concentrate on my girl instead of driving to Boston, an hour each way, to go grab this medicine.”...Now the girl is 16 years old, comes into my pharmacy still, to this day, walks in, gives me a hug. And the mom, to this day — even though honestly, I was just doing my job. As a compounding pharmacist, I was doing my job, taking care of a patient. She still thanks me to this day. To this day, they still thank me for taking care of her at that time.... What can I say? Stories like that, because of compounding, they never leave you. I mean, talk about personalized. That’s as personalized as it gets.”