Category: Medical

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Well that’s interesting!

So I was very displeased with the original Doctor that I was assigned when I got insurance.

No problem! There are other Doctors. At least that’s what you’d think. 

Yes, there are other doctors. So I did some research, asked some questions of knowledgeable people and selected a new one.

I called today to get an appointment and guess what? The first available appointment is mid September.

You’ve got to be kidding me! Oh, they can put you on a “standby list” But September? Really? Oh, and that time frame is for the whole group, not just the Doctor I was assigned.

The funniest part of all of this is, I’m no better off having insurance, than I was when I didn’t have insurance. I can go to a shit head doctor that doesn’t pay any attention to my actual concern or what I’m there to see him about, thereby not getting the care that I need, OR choose a doctor that I can’t see in a reasonable time frame.

WTAF?

For someone like myself, this is totally unacceptable. I don’t need that much in the way of care, but waiting 7 months? Really? Are you kidding me?

This sort of thing is why people like myself just stop trying. When the barriers to getting something done are so high, or the goals posts/rules are shifting in a random fashion people like me just choose not to play. This philosophy extends to Doctors, Lawyers, Job Searches, and virtually every other aspect of life today.

Okay, back to shopping for a doctor.

Once again, I’m reminded why I went to Orange County 70 MILES from where I live, to see a Doctor.

 

On the other hand, supposedly this insurance is a POS, which used to mean that I could walk in to any Doctor that was “In-Network” and the insurance company would sort it out on the back end.

Maybe I’ll investigate that 

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Who the Hell is Complex Care Solutions?

I’ve found them to be remarkably annoying!

Who they are is a 3rd party vendor that works with many of the major health insurance companies.

They seem to be a bunch of paper pushers, whose job is to arrange things like in-home nurse assessments. Yeah, their name says it all. Complex Care Solutions, indeed adds complexity to your medical care.

In my case they forced me into some bullshit video assessment with a nurse practitioner.

After that one contact. Then they embarked on a campaign of twice weekly phone calls asking for me to review their service, or their nurse practitioner. They said they were gathering information for the insurance company. But I ask “Why?”

Surely that information was provided by my “Doctor” during our appointment, wherein he played on his computer for the entire appointment, but didn’t really examine me as a patient. In truth the entire appointment could have been handled on a video call and honestly the level of actual “care” I got, was about as impersonal or useful as WebMD.

They called again today mid-morning asking when my next Doctor’s appointment is.

Okay… That’s it!

Why do they, a third party, need to know that bit of information?

The insurance company will find out when they’re billed.

I called the insurance provider and asked what this was about. More importantly, I asked if this bullshit was necessary to the continuance of my policy.

Turns out, Complex Care Solutions can be cut right out of the equation. Which I did!

I explained that I was talking to Complex Care Solutions more than I talk to my own family. Every time I spoke with these people it was like I was talking to  my own personal mother hen. There may come a time when I’ll need their services but not today!

A) I’m not keeping my current Doctor
B) I’m actively researching and investigating new Doctors
C) I’d like to keep my private medical information, oh I don’t know… private.
D) They got real quiet when I mentioned privacy and cited HIPPA rules. Which thankfully I know due to previous employment (quarterly training will do that). They haven’t violated HIPPA, but as a patient, I have the ability to exercise at least some control over my personal information and who has access to it.

I may be over-reacting but it’s like they’re trying to rope me into some endless bullshit loop of living my life around the medical profession, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies.

Again… I’m not to that stage of the game.

But there’s another aspect to all of this. It’s billing. 

I said it to the insurance company. “Just because I’m insured, doesn’t mean that I as The Insured should abdicate my responsibility to control costs.”

I don’t need their service or the attendant annoyance or billing from their phone calls. Believe me when I say, for each time they call me, they’re getting paid.

I also mentioned that I was less than pleased with my (Doctor of record) billing the insurance company almost $1000 for that single appointment. That’s obscene especially since the “physical exam” wasn’t in any way physical.

I mean, what happened to the days when the doctor looked at your eyes, ears, throat, felt the glands in your neck, did a cursory exam of your skin, listened to your heart & breathing, in the case of men, had you drop trou examined your naughty bits, maybe did a DRE, ordered up your blood work, asked if there was any concern you had, then took a look, made some suggestions, told you if there was any issue the blood work uncovered he’d call you, then swatted you on the ass and said, “Go Play!”

(Okay, maybe they didn’t swat you on the ass,) but it was personal and when you left the place you at least felt like you’d been seen. Maybe you felt a little violated, but you at least had some reasonable confidence that a professional who’d seen thousands of bodies, had in fact examined you and didn’t see anything glaringly obvious that needed immediate attention.

Personally, I didn’t mind being buck naked in the exam room and didn’t bother with those silly paper gowns or any pretense of modesty. It was the same mindset as being in the gym locker room. Who cared? The Doc was doing his job and that meant he was gonna see ya, all of you, including parts of your body you probably haven’t seen.

Today What passes for an “exam” might as well be done in a freaking board room.

Human bodies are messy, organic, and sometimes downright disgusting. I think that’s why, when I wrote the check for a yearly exam, I didn’t mind the expense.

That Doctor probably didn’t want to see another naked body by the end of the day. But it was his job, and his education gave him the baseline normal to compare against. The fee I paid was exchanging value for time spent & experience.

My favorite Doctor, spent our first appointment asking me about every scar on my body. “How’d you get that? When?” If I showed up with a new scar, he’d ask what that was about and if I’d had appropriate care when it happened.

That’s an intimacy that’s been lost, it was being seen and it felt like he gave a damn about me, the human standing naked in front of him or his nurse. Granted, if his nurse didn’t need to see me completely nude, he’d say something like, “Pull your boxers on, I’m going to need my nurse to…” do whatever needed doing.

Admittedly, I was comfortable putting my life in his hands because we had a relationship that was personal, and not based on how many billing codes he could tic on a form.

I knew he was a “Cookie Monster” with a fondness for home made chocolate chip cookies, well anything chocolate. I knew he performed in the Pagent of the Masters in Laguna Beach. I knew he was an avid bicyclist, and that often he’d bike to work. I knew he took his profession very seriously and when he lost a patient to illness it was personal to him. I knew his first whole name, and if I encountered him outside his office I never introduced him as “Doctor”. He was Tom. Why? Because if anyone knew he was a “Doctor” there were always people that tried to get free medical advice. If we happened to be at a social event I, among others kept an eye on him and would be rude to someone that had him “cornered” talking shop. He was respected, and he took care of a lot of my friends too. The man referred me when necessary, to other doctors that worked on him. If he trusted them, then so could I.

There’s nothing quite so comforting as coming out of anesthesia and seeing “Your Doctor” at the foot of the bed conferring with “The Doctor” that did a procedure on you. I remember snippets of their conversation. “Wow he’s got a mouth on him!”, “Yeah, but he’s a good guy, anything well need to follow up on?”, “Nah, he’s good, you might want to make a note that he’s cranky with this type of anesthesia.”, “Okay, thanks. I’ll hang out for a few minutes to see he comes out of it okay.”, “Hey thanks, I’m going to check on my next patient, we still on for… RIY&#%*^@ this Sunday?”, “huadiry7%$#3”

Then “My Doctor” prying one of my eyes open, “Hey, there you are… They’ve got you on O2, it’s the good stuff so breathe deep. There you go, nice & slow, trust me it’ll help clear your head. Apparently you were searing like a sailor at some point.”

“Muff uhh, probably like a Marine Doc. My friends… all Marines.”

I still remember his chuckle and the warmth of his hand on my forehead telling me to take it easy before I started moving around. 

He was a healer, a man I trusted and no matter what, I knew he’d see me through.

That bond of trust, and confidence is missing these days. The humanity has been bled out of medical care.

Now it’s about how many different Doctors can get their finger in the insurance scam. How much can be billed and that’s dependent on sheer numbers of patients. At the same time the rates keep going up for less time spent with a patient the insurance companies keep jacking their rates, and plugging in more “services” that add nothing but opportunities to bill.

I’ve digressed, but I think it’s really important to remember what the title “Doctor” once meant. The profession was once about humanity, care, respect, and dignity.

When was the last time you felt like baking, individually wrapping, and labeling 2 dozen cookies with ingredients, then delivering them to your Doctor’s office before a holiday?

When was the last time you had your Doctor compliment you on weight loss, increased musculature, quitting smoking, your baking skills, or a custom holiday card made up of a photo you’d taken?

When was the last time you felt you’d been seen?

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Saw this post on X and it got me to thinking

“ If Republicans kill ACA subsidies, a couple making $85K will pay $25,000 a year for healthcare.

That’s 30% of their income—just to stay alive.

This isn’t “fiscal conservatism.” It’s economic violence against the middle class.”

  • Brian Allen @allenanalysis

‪Health insurance doesn’t keep 90+ % of the population paying for it alive.

Most people in a given year don’t spend anywhere near the amount they pay in insurance premiums.‬

‪We joke about men not seeing their doctors. Women may see their doctors 3-4 times a year. If you’ve got children they’re seeing doctors more frequently, but even so an average normal family probably isn’t spending as much as their yearly or even monthly premium.‬

‪The question to ask is what does it really cost for a 20 minute visit with a doctor? What do medications actually cost to manufacture? Why can I self pay for a medication and pay $50 for 90 days, but if I put it through insurance suddenly that same medication is $400? Why can I “Self Pay” for my once a year doctor visit, have a physical + tests & have it cost $800 cash, but my monthly insurance premium per month is $1400? ‬

‪Yes, insurance costs are out of hand. Yes, insurance companies are making breath-taking profits not on illness but by selling fear. The fear they’re selling is rising medical costs but they have a hand in driving those costs up by making those actually practicing medicine have to add staff just to deal with insurance billing and coding.‬ Who are insurance bureaucrats to deny a doctor’s diagnosis?

‪The medical / insurance / pharmaceutical industry is a snake eating its own tail. That snake gets fatter each cycle but eventually it will eat itself to death.‬

‪This issue isn’t partisan. The issue is continuing to throw money at a system that is fundamentally broken and expecting the brokenness to get fixed without looking at or demanding to know why / how it’s broken and taking appropriate action to fix it.‬

‪ACA was presented as an attempt to address the problem. It didn’t work, the math never worked. Congress knew that going in. That’s why they attempted to mandate everyone pay into the system and why they were going to fine people who didn’t.

It failed In part because it didn’t account for economic conditions, and in part because it didn’t account for adherence to ACA rules adding cost and complexity to the practice of medicine.

‪The ACA pretty much drove small medical practices out of business. They had no choice but to merge with larger medical groups or hospitals meaning that a doctor hanging out a shingle and seeing patients on his or her own all but disappeared.

The quality of care decreased because now you may see one of four or more doctors none of whom know your name. None of them interact with you as a person and all of them are diagnosing / prescribing based on data in your chart, not actually knowing you as a living breathing human being.

Half the time they’re not listening and in some cases it’s questionable if they fully understand what you’re saying due to language barriers. You’re just one of a thousand bodies parading through an office in a given week.‬

‪Fixing this system isn’t about supplementing it with taxpayer’s dollars. Fixing this system is about bringing it to heel.

One way to start that might be for everyone that can, to stop buying the insurance companies fear. Switch to self pay and then negotiate fair pricing from medical practitioners.

Another possibility is to demand upfront pricing so that a patient knows it will cost X dollars for a procedure. If you see an MD it’s $100 /hr (And you get their FULL attention, no more playing with their computers). Blood work costs X dollars for a comprehensive panel. X-rays? What does it cost for materials+the hourly rate for the technician+the hourly rate for a doctor to look at the X-ray. There was a time when a film X-ray cost $50 flat. Why does where you have any testing done affect the bottom line cost? Just crossing county lines can have a 30% differential.‬

‪Why is it that we all have blood work done, but if you ask them to tell you what your blood type is, they want to charge you another fee? They’re already there, they’ve got the lab, the samples, and the typing cards. Shouldn’t we all know our blood type as a matter of safety?‬

‪These are the kinds of questions that should be asked.‬

‪You want the government to do something about healthcare? Then have them run audits and accounting to determine the real costs of care. ‬Then move forward to make changes beneficial to the American people, not the insurance companies.

You wouldn’t continue to pump gas into your car from a leaky gas pump, why do people think it’s okay to keep pumping tax dollars into a system that is leaking money like a sieve and providing poor services?

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First Doctor’s appointment at this age

They gave me a minimal dementia test. They asked me to draw a clock after asking me to remember three words.

Yawn!

The young lady administering the test had a problem, (she was quiet, but obviously concerned,) when I started drawing the clock. Then she added that the clock show show 11:10.

I guess she thought I was having a problem when I started drawing the numbers.

I started with twelve, then 6, then 3, then 9, at the four cardinal points inside the circle. Then I added 1,2 then 4,5 then 7,8 then 10, 11.

When I started, she looked a little confused. I paused for a second or two. Visualizing the clock as I wanted it to appear. Then I started drawing. At that point she realized I wasn’t nuts, I simply had a plan. I drew the hands hour shorter and minute longer, indicating the requested time.

Then she asked me the three words. I gave them back in alphabetical order, then asked her if I was supposed to give them back in the order she said them.

She just smiled. 

My memories are apparently functional. As is planning, and visualizing.

All of this was with me running on empty. I’d walked the dog his 2.5 miles, showered, shaved, and had not eaten or had coffee with any sugar in it. It was 11:00 am and I had been really growly when I showed up for the appointment. It took over an hour to get there, traffic was stupid heavy.

Plus after spending 2 hours fighting their stupid web site on Sunday, I was annoyed they didn’t have the data available.

This was not a good combination. Me hungry, bordering on hangry and yet more stupid legal paperwork. They of course wanted an emergency contact. Which experience has shown me is a soft pedal way for them to target someone else if the bill isn’t paid.

I guess I’m overly suspicious.

I really don’t trust the medical profession anymore.

I liked the Dr. but as is in all visits these days, he had to play with his computer a lot. I was about to fire him. But then he actually examined me. He executed a good save.

I told him about a previous doctor I’d fired precisely because all he did was play on the computer the whole appointment. He seemed taken aback by that. I pay for a doctor’s expertise in medical matters not computer science. This is a “benefit” of the Obamacare BS and also the medicare system.

Doctors, even good ones, spend more time in filling out shitty online forms than they do hands-on with their patients.

He was suggesting blood work, and reminded me that it was time for a colonoscopy. Great! That’s going to be a problem. I’m going to need to have someone take the time to transport me on “The Day” Grrr.

I’m considering that when I have this done, I’m not going to be put out. There have been too many reports of medical people hitting IVs with vaccines they think a person should have.

I pushed back on the colonoscopy and he said I could do the home kit but if analysis was inconclusive I’d have to do the full thing.

The problem I have with doctors, particularly in the case of colonoscopies, is that if they find something, usually they’ll find it, then they’ll make another appointment to take care of it, then they’ll make another appointment to recheck that they fixed the problem, on and on. Until you say “Enough!“

If the doctors are already there, and they see the problem, they should fix the problem. But they don’t make as much money that way.

The Doc also suggested an ultrasound of my aorta. Yeah, I smoked so apparently in men It increases the risk of an aortic rupture. It’s probably worthwhile.

I don’t want to get sucked into the endless cycle of doctors, and medical appointments defining what’s left of my life. That’s not quality, it’s the final indignity of a life enslaved by working for the illusion of a retirement full of sunsets and travel.

——— Update 8/28 ———  

Okay,

I’m done with this Doctors office.

1) They’ve been spamming me to fill out a satisfaction survey since I left their office yesterday. I suppose I could fill out their survey saying that I was dissatisfied. I doubt seriously that it will change a damn thing.

2) I asked the Nurse or whatever she was, in-office if the Doctor could add one more test to the battery of tests he’d ordered. She said she’d ask and there’d be a modified lab order in their portal. Haven’t seen that yet.

3) The doctor issued another RX for a combo med I’ve been taking for years, but we’d discussed reducing the amount of one of the components, with the goal of getting off or minimizing the medication. The RX he issued is the exact same dosage. I noticed the error before I headed to the pharmacy and instead of going through the nightmare of the pharmacy, I sent a message via their patient portal noting that this wan’t what we’d discussed and that in any event I’m not going to do 30 day RXs if it’s decided that there will be no change to the med. I want 90 day supplies.

4) As I mentioned above, the Doctor asked about colonoscopy. I told him I was not particularly interested. He said that we could do the “poo in a box” version then make a determination about doing the necessity of the full monty version. This morning, I get a call from an Indian (Dot not Feather) demanding that I call him back to schedule my upcoming colonoscopy.

5) Nowhere in their portal is there mention of making arrangements for the aortic ultrasound.

In other words, this is exactly what I will not do. I will not slave myself to the medical industrial complex so they can destroy my quality of life with endless tests, appointments, and medications, while they milk insurance fees.

I’m not angry about getting old, I refuse to live in terror of the next phase of aging or the next mega disease. I will not relinquish my life to yet another bunch of assholes telling me how to conduct my life.

I spent my adult working life enslaved to corporations and people who saw me as a easily replaceable cog or stepping stone to their goals. I sure as hell am not willing to allow myself to be enslaved to the medical profession and I will never allow these healthcare professionals to “COVID” me again.

Obviously these people or this practice is too damn busy to pay attention. If they can’t pay attention on minor issues, can I trust them to pay attention in the event of a major issue?

As a courtesy, I went to their website to cancel the October follow-up appointment to review the medication changes and lab results.

Since the medication changes weren’t made, and nothing else discussed in the appointment was as we discussed I’m not going to need to be at an appointment now am I?

Their system wouldn’t let me cancel the appointment without providing an explanation.

That was probably a mistake on their part. Because it was pretty much the only way for me to tell them what I thought.

I filled their demanding little box.

Wrong RX. (not what was discussed in appointment.)

Got a call from some unintelligible person demanding to schedule my upcoming colonoscopy (not what was discussed in appointment.)

I lost my other half of 34 years in 2023 due in part, to similar lack of precision / failure to listen on the part of a hospital, and the medical group where he was a patient. My feeling today is exactly the same as when I was dealing with his care. He was not just another body, and neither am I.

I do not want the remainder of my life, however long or short that may be, circumscribed by endless tests, labs, appointments, medications, and insurance billing opportunities.

Your staff and the Doctor are all very nice. You’re all doing your jobs as dictated by policy, procedure, and prevailing medical guidelines. I understand this, but I’m a person who is quite good at taking care of myself. I’m also a minimalist.

Biology in general, and Human biology, specifically appear to operate far better with a light touch. My experiences with medical intervention have generally resulted in poorer, rather than improved outcomes. 

I have zero desire to live a repeat of what the medical profession put the light of my life through in his last years. 

I’m going to take a step back, or a breath, then determine what I want to do, and how I want to do it. Even if that means filling out yet another ream of paperwork to see a physician.

Should I decide to go forward with the lab work, I’ll make an appointment to review the results.

FYI, My choice to cancel an appointment should not require a MANDATORY explanation.

The whole time I was writing that, I kept hearing Jerry telling me to “be nice”.

Then I remembered why I’d always maintained a doctor in Orange County. I’ve kept the Doctor in San Diego for the same reason.

It’s because the doctors, all of the doctors I’ve ever tried to work with in the San Bernardino area were sloppy just like this bunch appears to be. The doctors I dealt with for Jerry were, with one exception, the worst.

In 20+ years working with my doctor in OC he never made a mistake with prescriptions, or procedures, and with the exception of a dermatologist, (who are all basically shithead frat boys of the medical profession,) he referred me to the best specialists, meaning they knew their shit and were on the ball, when I needed them.

In part I think it was because the folks he referred me to, were the same people he went to for his care. (He was always searching for a decent dermatologist too.)

I actually fought with Jerry about changing doctors when he first started having problems. I wanted him to go to an Orange County doctor, specifically mine. Jerry had mentioned things in the years prior to him starting to have problems, which concerned me about the local practices. I felt that if he saw my Doctor, he’d be referred to the “right” specialists and would get better care.

I know that sounds elitist and effete.

Jerry didn’t want to have to travel that far. In the end, it might not have made a difference, but I doubt I’ll ever change my opinion that poor lackadaisical medical care led directly to his death.

Now, I’m going to try to rescind all the legal documents one must sign to see a fucking doctor, and at the same time make sure this practice cancels any authorization requests for additional tests. It may be insurance money, but damn if I’m going to let that money be spent wastefully.

Then I’ll work on finding another Doctor, or I’ll keep the guy in San Diego at least until I get the rest of my life sorted out.

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Wow, That was annoying!

Holy Shit! What a pain in the ass!

So I’m changing doctors. This guy is recommended and far more local to me than the guy in San Diego. I hadn’t switched previously because, well anything to do with the Medical industrial complex is always a royal pain in the ass. I figured I’d spare myself the annoyance until I really needed to deal with it.

Welp, it’s that time.

I initiated the “Get to know you,” appointment. It’s next Wednesday.

The practice sent me an innocuous reminder text. Okay, at least it wasn’t the 3 text reminders, 2 phone calls, and 2 emails that the BMW dealer sent me about the car service I’d scheduled. 

Do people just not keep any appointments anymore?

I clicked on the little link and was taken to their patient portal on my iPad. (I’ll often use my iPad like this as a firewall keeping my phone and computer isolated. Because it’s a lot easier to deal with flushing and reloading the iPad than the other two in the event it’s a scam.)

Their link took me to a patient intake form. Okay, that was reasonable. I could fill out all the bullshit ahead of time instead of doing it on an annoying clipboard in a waiting room full of sick people, wondering what exactly I was being exposed to as however many of them tried to hack up one of their lungs. 

Things were humming along nicely until I got to a couple of screens that presented no exit. Their software vendor had neglected to consider the possibility that a patient would be using an iPad with one of Apple’s Magic Keyboards.

Rotating the iPad didn’t reveal the “NEXT” button because I’d already begun entering data in the landscape format the Magic Keyboard presented data in.

So screwed! I tried handing off the input to the computer, but their wondrous Indian programmers must’ve thought that wasn’t something anyone would do, so they’d locked that out. I couldn’t scroll further up because again, the wondrous Indian programmers never thought about accessibility and what might happen if they’d misread the screen size. If someone had accessibility turned on, with the text being larger, then the user would be locked into a frustrating situation as well.

I reinitiated the session on my computer from scratch. In the full web page I could access the “NEXT” button. Okay… Moving on.

On the full size display they presented a typical “left hand” menu. In fact it was a progress bar not a menu. So while it looked like you could go back to correct mistakes… Nope! You couldn’t. You could restart a section, losing all the data you’d entered but you couldn’t just step back a step.

For example, They asked about hospitalizations, then they asked about surgeries. I couldn’t see the surgeries section until I’d completed the hospitalization section. SO the form is incorrectly filled out because in both cases surgeries were performed in hospitalization settings under anesthesia.

Then I couldn’t go back to actually fix the issue by entering the hospitalization dates followed by the surgery types and dates.

Annoying!

Don’t even get me started on the upload of ID and insurance card. The insurance card had a “Cropping feature” that didn’t work correctly. And the Insurance section did not properly scan the insurance card nor did it allow me to fill in the missing data.

Sigh…

Shitty software really pisses me off. 

It’s a damn good thing I wasn’t doing a LIVE BP reading.

Then they wanted signatures. Which would have been easy on the iPad but I wasn’t filling out the forms on the iPad. 

The iPad and Mac have a nifty function that will allow you to use an Apple Pencil to sign forms displayed on a web page. You can tell the computer to access the iPad for a signature. However the glorious Indian programmers had once again disabled that function.

What they in their infinite wisdom had not disabled was the ability to hand the web page displayed on the computer to the iPad so I pushed it all back to the iPad and provided the requested signatures.

Moving On…

Later in the process I encountered the “Next” button issue again. But guess what? I couldn’t had the iPad data back to the computer.

Okay… reinitiate the process on the computer and hope that the entered data had actually been posted to the profile.

Most of it was saved, so back to using the computer.

Moving On…

Finally I got the whole shebang filled out and figured I’d correct whatever was fucked up when I got to the damn appointment.

Then, they wanted me to download their patient portal app on my phone. OH GOD…

That went fairly smoothly, since I knew what kind of bugs were likely to crop up.

On the phone app, instead of a password, they wanted a 6 digit PIN.

I ask you, what the fuck is the point of a PIN when you’ve already saved a perfectly good password in the apple passwords application, and that application is more than capable of presenting that password across all apple devices? Just another fucking thing to remember!

There’s 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back, but it’s done. 

This kind of thing is exactly why you need a manual tester to actually look at software before you publish your bullshit to the world.

There are a lot of people my age for whom this would have been too daunting to complete. I also have to ask, “Why did I give all this information to their clerk when I made the fucking appointment? None of it was entered into their system!” Equally I’m curious why medical expenses are so high if I’m doing the keyboard entry for them. I ask the same question using self checkout at stores.

I’ve started not paying for bags, even though I use them. If I’m doing the work of a cashier, the least they can do is let me take my earnings in a couple of bags.

While I was off the hill the other day getting the car serviced I took care of another little medical annoyance.

I needed to pick up a RX from Walgreens. I’d chosen the Fontana location since it was relatively close to the house. It was a cluster fuck of EPIC proportions. 

I’d placed an RX request via their application on Monday. They sent me an email saying it would be ready on Wednesday and there I was on Thursday trying to pick it up.

They had it, one bitch had it in her hand, a full 90 day supply but even after taking my insurance info, confirming that I could have the RX, they told me I’d have to come back one hour later because they were closed for lunch. Uhhh I was right there, they were right there, the medication was right there and it was 15 minutes till their lunch time.

Their whole process was a complete clusterfuck. Fine! I had lunch, paid $3 for a bottle of coke and $11 for a mostly bread sandwich and waited.

When I was done with lunch, I wandered around the Walgreens, sizing them up for other supplies. I picked up some Flonase while I was there. Then waited in line for another hour to get my ZERO charge bottle of meds.

The delay put me in shitty traffic all the way home.

Walgreens, is probably not going to be my pharmacy of choice. Or at least not THAT Walgreens. It was 107° down there. By the time I got home I was drained. I couldn’t think, or concentrate.

So I lost another day.

I need to find a way to get 90 day prescriptions because I don’t want to have prescription anxiety. You know, “Oh I can’t leave yet, I have to wait for the RX to be authorized and I’m allowed to pick it up,” every month.

I intensely dislike going to pharmacies. I hate everything about their officious “See we’re medical people in our scrubs, we can make you dance hahahaha, we’re so important,” attitude.

No, you pack of idiots, you count pills from one bottle to another bottle. The hardest thing you have to do is decide what size paper bag to put those pill bottles in. The pharmacist is only one of you who has completed higher education.

Perhaps I’m just cranky! 

Next week is the Doctor’s appointment and we’ll be revisiting the BP meds, and other issues.

All I can say is this guy better live up to his reputation and the recommendations. Otherwise I’m going to be really cranky!