#might even go to the store tomorrow to get refills because i cannot live like this | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

delphiniumgrue · 7 years

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(!) This Quest is Repeatable.

Prescription get: Achievement unlocked! So my insurance ended abruptly at the end of October, and it took me November to 1. find out about it, 2. sign up for new insurance. Fortunately, I was able to get an ACA plan that covered my existing doctor and the pharmacy I've used for 6 years. So December was nice. I even got 3-month refills on my two most important painkillers, gabapentin and duloxetine, so I didn't have to keep trying to venture out of the house on the EXACT day my insurance knows I would run out, no matter the weather or my back or my joints or my fibro or my fatigue or... Until that 3-month refill, I would usually end up going about a week without painkillers while I tried to pry myself out of the house -- without painkillers -- to at least go through the drive-through at my pharmacy two blocks away. Just two blocks, never leaving the car, doesn't sound like it would be that hard to do monthly, even with someone else arbitrarily dictating what day it had to happen regardless of a dozen other factors pertinent to my ability to do it. So going through that only four times a year sounded fantastic. Of course, I'm now running out of the prescriptions filled for three months in December and have been out for more than a week of the one-month ones I filled in the first week of January. That means I've gone a week without my asthma medicine and the muscle relaxant that allows me to wake up with working hands, feet, and jaw. That's been making it tough to get out of the house lately, and kind of dangerous to go anywhere that sells flowers -- I'm allergic to chrysanthemums, and mum arrangements are huge with Homecoming and Valentine's Day coming up. So last week, I finally got a ride to the pharmacy, and when the call that my prescriptions were ready came -- as I expected -- they instead said they were no longer accepting my insurance. At all. They simply would not fill my prescriptions any more, after six years of knowing everything I'm on and why I need it and mercy refills and partial refills and general compassion and understanding. So I had to find a new pharmacy. Went to the insurance company's website and was informed that my insurance policy was no longer good, having expired yesterday, at the end of 9999. Couldn't access the customer portal at all. Every single page just tells me that it's almost 8000 years in the future and my insurance expired yesterday. Couldn't even get a phone number; all I could get was an online form to fill out describing my complaint. Form claims I will hear back from them in three business days. The complaint I submitted about inability to access the customer portal was two weeks ago; the complaint about needing to access it to find a new pharmacy was Wednesday. No call. No email. I called the Walgreen's three blocks away; one block further, but still with the drive-through. Not too much worse. I asked if they accepted my insurance, and if they were a "preferred" provider for my plan (which would save me about $50/month). They said "we accept most of them," in an accent so heavy I couldn't understand them. (This is not a racial complaint; I have CAPD and can barely understand unaccented English spoken slowly and clearly over the phone. It's enough to navigate calls that have an established script, like ordering pizza; it's not enough to ask a question and understand a multipart answer. I’d tried to check on their website, but it said nothing about what insurance they accept.) I kept asking if they meant they accept most insurance providers in general, or most insurance plans from my provider, and they just kept repeating the same sentence: "We accept most of them." When I asked if they would check to see if they were a preferred provider, they continued to reply, "We accept most of them." While this might sound frustrating to you, proper empathy would require imagining that you're having this conversation in a foreign language, in a foreign country, where people get irritable if your command of their language isn't fluent enough. Are you saying things wrong, or hearing things wrong? Why is this conversation going so sideways? Why are you unable to express that the response you're getting doesn't actually answer the question you're asking? Whatever is going on, though, it's probably your fault for not speaking and understanding the language well enough. So I had to give up on Walgreens. It's not just petty, fleeting customer irritation; if I can't get them to answer that question, how am I going to be able to call in for refills? What if I get a new prescription and need to ask about what it does, or whether it interacts with alcohol or certain foods? IT IS DANGEROUS TO ME to choose a pharmacist I cannot interact with. Friends on a nearly-identical insurance policy told me that Randall's pharmacies accept our insurance and are a preferred provider, so I next went to Randall's -- four blocks away, and no drive-through, and the pharmacy is at the very back of the grocery store. Remember at this point that I could not walk very well until the newest painkillers in December; I could not shop for groceries or wait in line to check out. I had to have groceries delivered, or on a good day, take my scooter --which requires lifting it in and out of the car, folding it and unfolding it. Because it is a folding scooter, it has no basket and the only storage room is under my seat and legs. I still cannot shop for more than a day's groceries at a time with it, and not all days are good-enough days for me to perform all the physical activity of rolling it out to the car, folding and stowing it, driving the four blocks, unloading and unfolding it, doing my shopping, loading groceries into the car, folding and stowing the scooter, driving the four blocks home, unloading and unfolding the scooter, driving my groceries to my front door, folding and storing the scooter, and then putting away my groceries with whatever standing-and-walking capability I have left. So a pharmacy at the very back of a large grocery store with no drive-through, popular at all but just-before-closing hours and me without a handicapped tag -- and so requiring quite a bit of walking just to get from my car to the front door, unless I use the scooter -- and then navigating the depth of the store to wait in line at the pharmacy window, make my purchases, and walk (unless I use the scooter) the whole way back... It's an ability Catch-22: If I'm having a good enough day to do all that with the scooter, I'm probably right on the edge of being able to do it all without the scooter anyway, and if I can't do all that standing and walking, I'm probably also not up to hauling the scooter around. And in any case, insurance not allowing refills until the day I run out basically guarantees that I'll always be having a bad-pain-day on refill days, just as a baseline without any weather changes, EDS injury-prone pains, energy level drops, or other problems. Nonetheless, that's now the best pharmacy available to me. I just had to make three trips/calls to turn in my insurance forms, request my prescriptions to be transferred, told they don't have my stuff in stock yet because they weren't expecting to need to fill them, and go back on Day Three of being out of asthma medicine and duloxetine to get an emergency refill. Still waiting for all my other prescriptions to come through. Meanwhile, one of the withdrawal effects of running out of duloxetine is intense suicidal depression. So that was fun. That's also why Randall's scrambled to get my refill done the next day, rather than in a week or so. Gosh, thanks. (Sincere toward the pharmacy, extremely sarcastic toward the whole fucking FUBARed system.) I still have to go back tomorrow for a second-priority "urgent" refill of the muscle relaxant so I can wake up with working hands, feet, and jaw. I had to turn down margaritas with friends last night, just because I know the cold margaritas will trigger my TMJ and leave me unable to eat, speak, or smile -- they hurt me when I do have the muscle relaxant on-board, but they're disablingly painful without it. So while I've had to be careful around any allergens because I'm more prone to asthma attacks right now, and "falsely suicidal" (as I think of it) if I'd run out of the duloxetine, and being very careful what I eat or drink so I don't leave my face in a level of pain that would cause constant screaming if I could open my mouth or move any muscles in my face without making it pass-out-from-pain-worthy (there's a reason i keep literal gallons of applesauce at home; I have to drink it through a straw sometimes just to get calories, if I don't have the muscle relaxant), I've also had to make multiple trips to the back of a large grocery store, on foot, past giant displays of my worst airborne allergen. Hold my breath and run? uses up too much walking-and-standing to make it back safely. Hold my breath and walk? I run out of breath before I make it past the floral section. Hold my shirt over my nose, breathe normally, and walk? people stare at me (and, like tonight, make rude comments) because I "hate for people to have something pretty in their lives". So anyway, I got through that whole invisible-to-able-people disability obstacle course and got my damn asthma medicine and painkiller. I just have to go back tomorrow and do it all over again to get the muscle relaxant. And then again in a week to get everything else. Oh, and talk to my doctor on the phone to ask for 3-month-refill-specific prescriptions, or this pharmacy will make me do it all over again, two or three days out of every month, because I can't refill everything on the same day thanks to the insurance limitations. Or I could sit through a day of asthma risk and suicidal depression to get three of my six prescriptions synched back up. Navigating the US medical system while disabled: Achievement Unlocked! (This quest is repeatable.)

#disability #us healthcare

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