Tacoma, Wash. ? A woman with a brain tumor filed a lawsuit against Walgreens, saying when she arrived to pick up her painkiller prescription one day, a pharmacist had her arrested.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Pierce County Superior Court, Shannon O’Brien, 35, said she went to the drive-up window at a Walgreen Drug Store two blocks from her home last July 7. The pharmacist on duty thought she had faked her Percocet prescription and called police, the lawsuit stated.

“I was in hysterics — crying, very upset and very embarrassed,” O’Brien said Thursday. “They could have checked my records. I’ve had the same medicine every month.”

A spokeswoman at Walgreen Co. headquarters in Deerfield, Ill., said Friday she could not comment on pending litigation.

According to the lawsuit, when the pharmacist called the University of Washington Medical Center’s neurosurgery department to ask about it, he was told O’Brien’s doctor, Alexander Spence, was unavailable, so the prescription couldn’t be confirmed right away.

That’s when the pharmacist called Tacoma police, the lawsuit said. O’Brien was still sitting in her car at the drive-up window when they arrived.

O’Brien, who was first diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1994, said she told the officer who handcuffed her that he could call her doctor or her nurse to verify the prescription.

“I told him I had brain cancer, and I had a medical information card inside my wallet,” she said. “It didn’t matter to him. He didn’t believe anything I was telling him.”