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1:19pm September 12, 2014

Grrr….

feliscorvus:

I submitted a medication refill request on Wednesday of this week. Usually I hear back on the status by the next day, but it is now Friday and I’ve not heard a thing yet. Today is going to be the last day for a while I can actually get down to the pharmacy, so I was really hoping it would be ready today, because it’s going to be a right pain in the arse to do it during the upcoming week. 

I want to contact them and ask what’s going on, but I’m hesitating because I’m worried it will look like “drug seeking”, given this is an ADHD med. I’m not completely out, and my request was made well within the “ok to request a refill” window, but still, I am so tired of dealing with schedule-II medication stigma. 

Everyone I know is having this problem right now.  I have three different meds that are getting messed up refill requests.  And one of them is the only med, out of the way too many meds I take, that I can’t live without.

Like okay it’s annoying not to have Benadryl, because I’m severely allergic to cats and I live with one who routinely sleeps on my face.  And because it helps me sleep, and because it helps my nausea.  

But dexamethasone?  Come on.  I literally will die if I don’t have a constant supply of dexamethasone, and Medicare seems bound and determined to kill me in this way.  I have other meds (like seizure meds) where the withdrawal can be life-threatening.  But dexamethasone is one where simply not having it in my body is life-threatening, because it replaces the cortisol that my body doesn’t make anymore, and you can’t live without cortisol.

So every time we try to refill dexamethasone it turns into a huge panic where we have to get doctors to rewrite the scripts in exactly the way Medicare requires, which seems to change every frigging time, and then we get it by the skin of our teeth at the last minute.  With caregivers and case managers scrambling all over the place to get it to me.  This is not fair to me, it’s not fair to my staff, it’s not fair to my case managers, and it’s not fair to my doctors.  Or probably to the pharmacists either.