Taking care of medical business

One of the problems that I've had over the years is keeping my prescriptions straight.  No, I'm not talking about which drug to take and when to take it.  Instead, it's getting the orders in sync enough, so that I can expect all of my prescriptions at the same time when I am ready to reorder them.  This is not usually something that can easily be done, as none of the processes in place are geared to sync up prescriptions A, B, C, and D that are prescribed at different times, so that they can be delivered in one periodic shipment.

As much as I have to live with the headaches of a system not designed for patient convenience, I am most annoyed by a system that relies on inefficient mechanisms to confirm that a doctor wants to renew his/her patients' prescriptions.  When a recent drug (noted above) needed physician approval for refill (my 3 x 30 day orders were up), the system depended on me to contact the physician instead of providing him/her with a list of patients/drugs up for refill, and an easy way of checking off everything needed for the approvals. (This is how I see it.  It may be much easier from my doctor's point of view.)  So I had to chase down my doctor, and have his office send in the renewal.  To make things worse, is that there is no way for me to switch a prescription to go to the mail order pharmacy - I must go through the doctor.  (Even this is reasonable, but inconvenient for people like me.)  But what happens when a prescription is lost in limbo, like the one above?

Last Friday, I noticed a problem with the above prescription.  Unfortunately, my doctor was off for the weekend.  So I had to make a phone call on Monday morning.  The problem wasn't fixed on Monday (a slip up by the doctor's office), and I had to supply even more information to the office, so that they could get things straight.  Luckily, after my call back, things finally got fixed.  With only 7 pills left in the old prescription, I'm glad things are moving forward again.

There has to be a much better way.  Is this a problem in other countries?  The American medical system is extremely inefficient, and I wish I had access to something better.  We aren't getting our money's worth.  Doctors, Nurses, and other medical staff are not getting their fair share of monies being spent on health care.  The only people making out in our system are the big players: the major hospital chains and big pharma.  Hopefully, market pressures will eventually force our system to provide better value for monies being spent on it.  But I don't see that happening in my lifetime.
 

A visit to the doctor's office

 

Normally, I feel very tired when I get to work.  Once the initial jolt of caffeine has worn off, I start dragging for most of the rest of the day.  Today, I ended up breaking my routine, as I took a half day off from work for a doctor's visit.

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This was my first doctor visit using my new insurance.  Hopefully, I won't have any problems with it.  With my Medicare supplement (Part-G), I only need to pay $20 for a doctor's visit.  So I may end up spending less money (for a while) on Medicare than I did on my former Obamacare plan.  While there, I told my doc NOT to change prescriptions yet, as I had to get things straightened up with CVS/Caremark.  I've had a membership number for several years, and now it looks like I'll have to reregister for mail order prescription service - and may need to use another email address for this new prescription drug insurance provider.  AARGH!

Once done with the doctor, I had to change back into Marian mode for the rest of the day.  I was so tired by the time I got home, that I crashed after a quick dinner.

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One of these days, I hope to be able to go to the doctor's office in Marian mode, as I now do with my dentist.  Considering that this doctor is of Pakistani descent, I doubt that he'd feel comfortable seeing me as anything other than Mario.  So I'll have to wait until he retires to do so with a younger doctor....

Today, I had to go out in the morning as Mario

 

Today, I had only one thing on my docket - I had to bring my new insurance ID card to my doctor and have the office request that the mail order pharmacy refill 6 prescriptions. This meant I'd have to go out in my male presentation.  Although 1 of these prescriptions did not need to be refilled until the end of February, I figured that I'd ask the office to have everything sent in at the same time, so that I could reduce the frequency of times I'd need to log on to the website and reduce the shipping charges by having as much as possible included in a single shipment.  By the end of the day, I found out that all was right in prescription land, and that I no longer had any indications that there was something wrong with my insurance.

Around 5:00 pm, I had just started this entry, having keyed in the first few keystrokes when I got my first call of the day. It was TCL, and our daily check in with each other. A little after that, FH called, and we confirmed our plans for tomorrow. And then, after an exchange of text messages with Vicki, my 3rd phone call of the day.  Vicki felt it easier for us to talk on the phone, and talk we did - for over 3 hours!  After discussing how I can still look like a woman while wearing trouser like garments, we shifted to a set of random topics.  It was nice not to have a time limit on our chat.  

One topic covered in our chat was whether one would be missed or not if one were to wink out of existence. I was discussing this with someone online earlier in the day, and I said that few people would miss me.  The best way to tell if one would be missed is to think of the people who call you on the phone.  The less you are called, the likely you would not be missed that much. This person (from the morning chat) dropped a bombshell on me that I had already figured out on my own - she felt less about breaking up with her ex than she did when breaking up with me. I won't talk much more about my morning chat.  But Vicki understood exactly where I was coming from.  It was not from a point of depression.  It was from a point where much of my positive emotional energy has been discharged due to the pandemic, without ways to fully recharge that energy by being with people I care about.  Since I don't want to give my readers the wrong idea, I am not considering anything drastic, save maybe to buy another lottery ticket.

I could say a lot more things about the chat, but I'll hold off for now.  I figure that I have to phrase things in the way they were meant to come out in the chat, and not how they would appear if these words were to be copied verbatim. So until then, I'll hold off until I can phrase these thoughts correctly for my readers.