The main manager at this location is a gentleman named Todd. I simply don't know how to say how wonderful he is. I'll just tell our story.
My wife fell sick in 2018, and at the time we lived in Camarillo. The onset of her illness was unexpected and catastrophic. She went from "vibrant and full of life" one day, to the literal next day being confined to a chair or bed. She suffered a perpetual allergic reaction to nearly everything she ate, drank, or touched. The allergic reaction never stopped, for months. We didn't know what was going on at the time, but she was eventually diagnosed by UCLA doctors with a rare condition called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS). Seems like someone is born with and carries it without knowing until a "flare up" happens. My wife's flare was a full crash which resulted in a litany of medical problems. She suffered for months prior to a diagnosis, seeing specialist after specialist while the mysterious problem kept her hovering just one bad reaction away from death by anaphylactic asphyxiation.
Among the most severe of her new problems, however, was that drinking water, plain old water, kicked her body's immune system into "murderous self-annihilation" mode. A consequence of this was that there were very few things her body would accept for hydration without trying to kill her. Pedialyte happened to be something she could drink. So we started trying all different flavors. But then she'd react to the food dyes, or the artificial flavors. So ultimately it was down to plain electrolytes: clear and "flavorless" (which I put in quotes because without flavoring, it's like drinking bottled human sweat). But at least it kept her hydrated, and her body didn't react to it.
Then we discovered, on a whim, this little thing. It's a CVS-brand organic adult electrolyte with a lemon-berry flavor, and her body didn't react to it. Now this stuff isn't exactly liquid ambrosia, but compared to sweat-flavored hydration, it was a godsend. She was drinking 3-4 liters of electrolytes a day and, once she tried this organic lemon berry stuff, it was all she wanted. I wasn't about to deny her the one thing she could reliably and safely drink that didn't taste like my post-workout tee-shirt.
But there was a problem with supply. You see, a typical CVS stocks 4 of these 1-liter bottles per week. And I needed 6-7 times that number for my wife. We are privileged, and the cost was irrelevant compared to the value they had for her while she was sick, so at first I was going to every CVS in Camarillo, Newbury Park, Thousand Oaks, to get the number I needed for her. It was inconvenient, but no big deal.
Soon, though, it became clear we were using more than the collective CVSs in the area stocked. One day I asked the manager at another CVS, not this one on Arneil, if he could special-order some extra for me. He said sure. And then he never got more than normal. I asked managers at a few other stores, thinking surely one of them could manage it. But an increased supply never came to Ventura County CVSs.
After a few weeks of this, and a month learning the truck-delivery dates of all the stores in the area, I finally asked that first manager what the deal was, why he kept saying he was ordering some, but he never got more than the usual amount. He blah-blah-blahed at me pointlessly, which I took as a cue that he had no f'n clue and didn't particularly care.
Around this time, Todd became the manager at the Arneil location. As far as he was concerned, I came out of left field one day when I pulled him aside and bitterly complained about this. I demanded that he explain why this would be happening, to help me find a way to correct it. I wasn't mad at him; I was mad at every other manager who blew me off, mad at whatever failure of systems/processes made it hard for store managers to special-order things. Todd apologized, agreed that sometimes the system was convoluted, and explained some of the reasons why the system is built that way. I explained to him WHY this was such a big deal to me, WHY I needed so much of this one thing. I hadn't talked to any other manager about the medical problems my wife was having. I kind of didn't wanna talk about it, both because I didn't like to, and also because it seemed like doing so would be an awkward overshare. But Todd was amazing. He was already professionally engaged with me, but he was genuinely compassionate and concerned once he knew the full story.
He got the whole thing managed, and in no time we were swimming in organic electrolytes. He kept us supplied till we moved away, and he made sure we were setup with a CVS in our new city. Todd deserves more credit than he gets, and I wish nothing but the very best for him. It's rare to find genuinely-caring people like this, but Todd is one, warm, friendly, hard-working. He contributed as much to our health outcomes as any doctor. Thank you Todd.
PS) Wife is better now with diagnosis, meds, and new locale. read more
