January 5: Cooking and Prescriptions

It's Friday! I don't work today! Just like most days.

I got up at 8AM to watch Vicorva stream the last chapter of Windy Meadows, a not-cozy slice-of-life fantasy interactive-fiction game. The final chapter was short and wrapped everything up in an upbeat manner without any more trauma, so that was nice.

While the stream was playing, I went to make my usual breakfast and then saw the giant casserole dish in the fridge and remembered, right, I'd made stuffed French toast casserole to bake this morning. So I made the crumb topping, put that on top, and baked it. Came out tasty enough to me. Lut was fine with it but not excited and prefers regular French toast. I like the casserole better than ordinary French toast, but the casserole was way more work so I am not heartbroken. I had a second piece for breakfast and then Pretend Barista made me a Coke float at Pretend Coffee Shop so I guess I don't need to eat anything else today.

I got a reasonable amount of sleep last night but I'm tired this morning. Might take a nap after I finish the Coke float.

I am still trying to untangle the mess of Lut's prescriptions. This is a Story.

We've been getting our prescriptions through Wal-Mart since 2017. It's the closest pharmacy and it was fine for several years. But for the last year and a half or so, they've been basically incapable of successfully contacting a doctor when a prescription is out of refills. At first, I thought it was because Lut's oncologist had moved locations. But then they failed to contact my doctor, too. Pretty much every time a prescription ran out of refills, it required this long cycle of "call Wal-mart to make the request, call Wal-mart three days later to find out why it hadn't been filled, have Wal-mart promise to try contacting doctor again, call doctor three days later because Wal-mart says they're not responding, call doctor again two days later because doctor still hasn't sent prescription in because the pharmacy is supposed to call them." It's SO ANNOYING.

Amazon has been sending "try our pharmacy!" emails for months, so a few weeks ago, I transferred my prescription to them (which was out of refills and which Wal-Mart had, once again, failed to contact the doctor about.) This went fine!

Then I tried to find out if Amazon would take Medicaid. I could not find any listing of what providers Amazon does or does not accept, only "enter your insurance info and we'll tell you if we take it!" So I tried entering Lut's Medicaid info.

Amazon: "We can't get the info from this scan of the card, please enter the info."

Me: *enters the one(1) number on the card in the "Member ID" section of the form*

Amazon: "You need to enter the other three numbers."

Me: *enters the one(1) number on the Medicaid card in all sections*

Amazon: "This is not a valid entry."

Me: "Okay I guess you don't take Medicaid." *gives up*

Amazon, the next time I go to an Amazon page: "You're all set up! Transfer Lut's prescriptions now!"

Me: "Huh? Maybe there's some kind of review process where they figured it out?"

Narrator: "There was not."

So I transferred the three pending prescriptions, all of which we had around 10+ days remaining of them so I figured there was time to get them straightened out if Amazon had not figured out that Medicaid exists.

Narrator: "Hahaha! Good one."

To make a long story short: Amazon doesn't understand that Medicaid exists, Wal-mart can't grab the prescriptions back from them, and getting prescribers to re-issue a prescription to Wal-Mart has been even more agonizing than the usual "none of us know what to do when a prescription runs out of refills" dance. I probably should've switched to another drug store while I was at it, but I am constantly picking up prescriptions and driving twice as far to get them is not much more appealing than making multiple phone calls whenever they run out of refills. x_x

If Lut had fewer prescriptions or if he had to make copays for them under Medicaid, I might have gone with Amazon despite them not acknowledging that his insurance exists. But as it is, it's not the difference between paying $15 under insurance or $20 without -- he doesn't have to pay anything when we get them through Medicaid, and he's got like 12 prescriptions so having to pay cash would really add up. (This is not counting the anti-cancer drug, which is provided by a specialty pharmacy and we get by mail anyway.)

Anyway, I've gotten two of them taken care of now and picked those up this afternoon. The last one had more pills left than the others so it's not as urgent. (Of course each of the three was from a different provider, sigh. I did not think this attempt through.)

I have done the sketch for Sunday's Apothecaria (my buffer is getting awfully slim). I abandoned Pretend Coffee Shop because Lut was watching a video in there (it's understandable; his painting desk is in Pretend Coffee Shop and he sometimes watches painting videos while he's painting).

The last provider has been particularly ridic.

Wednesday: call doctor, go through phone tree, ask for doctor's assistant, person answers. Me: *explains situation*

Person: "The doctor and his assistant are out. You have to call back."

Me: "...I can't leave a message?"

Person: "Absolutely not. What kind of place do you take us for? *YOU*. HAVE TO CALL BACK. The nerve of you! Asking to leave a message! Unbelievable."

Me: "..."

This is actually the second time I have reached a person at provider's office -- a different provider! -- who told me I had to call back because the doctor was out. And I could not leave a message. Even though I did not need to talk to the doctor. And did not talk to the doctor when I called back. I HAVE NO EXPLANATION FOR THIS.

I forgot to call back Thursday (also, I was working so it wasn't very convenient.) Today, the phone tree put me through to the assistant's voice mail, an option not available on Wednesdays? Apparently? So I left a message explaining the situation and ending with, "You don't need to call me back, you can just send the prescription to the pharmacy k bye."

A few hours later, I turned my ringer off to take a nap. While I was sleeping, the assistant called back and left a message: "Hi, I won't listen to any part of a message other than the phone number, so you have to call me back for a third time and actually somehow reach me in person to tell me, personally, what it is you want."

x_x

I have another week or two before we run out of this one. I suppose there's still a chance that will be enough time.

...

Stop looking at me like that, Narrator.