![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Pill-Bottle-Getty.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tA woman says a Mesa pharmacy gave her the wrong pills, causing her to become very ill.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tA woman says a Mesa pharmacy gave her the wrong pills, causing her to become very ill.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Trevor Williams\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
In late 2024, 73-year-old Mai Thi Vu began feeling chronically unwell. She was intensely fatigued and consistently nauseous. Her nails were turning black, she was rapidly losing weight and her skin was blistering and discolored.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prior to this, Vu had been healthy for her age. She experienced some skin irritation, but she treated that with a drug called Hydroxyzine, a prescription antihistamine she took in 50-milligram doses.<\/p>\n
Or so she thought.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to legal records, over the early months of 2025, Vu\u2019s blood work began showing signs of anemia, bone marrow suppression and liver issues. She had also lost 15% of her body weight. In May, her doctor finally found the reason: Vu hadn\u2019t taken Hydroxyzine since November 2024.<\/p>\n
Unbeknownst to Vu, she had actually been taking 500 mg of Hydroxyurea, a similarly named chemotherapy drug mistakenly dispensed to her by the Mesa Safeway Pharmacy she had been regularly visiting for several years.<\/p>\n
In December, Vu filed a lawsuit against Safeway; its parent company, Albertson\u2019s; and Timothy Lee, the pharmacist who filled her prescription. She\u2019s seeking damages for physical pain, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, diminished health and independence, economic strain and more \u2014 all of which her suit says were incurred as a result of \u201cHydroxyurea toxicity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steven Beus, Vu\u2019s attorney, was unwilling to answer questions or comment on the case when asked by Phoenix New Times. Albertson\u2019s also did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
The Department of Health Services confirmed neither Lee nor that specific Safeway Pharmacy has been subject to any previous complaints or malpractice suits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear why or how Lee allegedly approved and filled the incorrect prescription, especially considering the fact that the correct prescription had been previously filled and documented correctly in Safeway\u2019s system, according to Vu\u2019s suit. The suit says that the day the medication mistake occurred, records show Lee filled the incorrect prescription not once, but twice \u2014 once for \u201capproximately 348 capsules, and again for 12 capsules,\u201d the complaint says.<\/p>\n
Even the description and directions on the outside of the bottles corresponded to Vu\u2019s correct medication, the lawsuit says. That means that every day, she was taking up to four tablets of the chemotherapy drug, which is a highly potent medication typically used to treat leukemia and sickle cell anemia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vu\u2019s lawsuit says she had been patronizing this same Safeway Pharmacy on the corner of Main Street and Dobson Road in Mesa for years. Pharmacy staff knew her personally and were well aware of her need for translation and additional support as a Vietnamese-speaking customer, according to her complaint.<\/p>\n
Vu stopped taking the chemotherapy drug as soon as her doctor discovered the error, but her lawsuit says that even as late as August 2025 \u2014 three months since the mix-up was discovered, and long after the drug had left her body \u2014 she was still experiencing chronic fatigue, fever and other symptoms of toxicity.<\/p>\n
Neither Safeway, Albertson\u2019s nor Lee has responded to the complaint in court, and no hearing dates have been set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman says a Mesa pharmacy gave her the wrong pills, causing her to become very ill. Trevor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247461,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[424,103,61,60,371,124410],"class_list":{"0":"post-247460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-drugs","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-medication","13":"tag-mesa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}