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I (Finally) Has A Doctor (TMI)
16 years ago
General
Kyoo no tema wa kore desu....
Long story short:
2 months after getting on Arizona's health care (thank you, Arizona! Ohio, kiss my corpulent white tuckus!), I finally got to see a doctor on Tuesday, and now have enough meds to tide me over until next time I see the doc.
Biiiiig thanks to Xorrito, who was generous with gas money, thus enabling me to travel the length & breadth of Tucson to accomplish this goal!!
It's been a real pain trying to get any doctor to see me; it seems all doctors on the lists I was provided (I requested several times) weren't taking anybody new or wouldn't schedule to see any new patients until December.
The problem is, I had run out of my diabetes meds a while ago. I needed 3 medications, which combined cost less than $30 for a month's supply. But there was no way I could get these meds without a doctor's script, and there's no way to get that if a doctor won't see me (my old doctor in Ohio, a great guy, couldn't renew my prescription without bloodwork & a checkup-- which is completely understandable).
Don't get me wrong, it's very nice having a normal bathroom experience again, but when it's all said & done I'd rather have the unfortunate side-effect of the diabetes meds & keep my eyesight.
In the past 2 weeks I've really been feeling the absence of the meds, both physically & mentally. Oddly enough the blood-sugar hasn't been too bad. My eyes on the other hand, have been alarming me--I've been getting more & more near-sighted. I've been bawling over practically anything. I get really angry, or really sad, or really happy, and BOOM here come the waterworks. I'm a sloppy crier, too--tears all over the place, snot flowing, red-faced & blotchy, the works. It's embarrassing & frustrating as hell for me to lose control like that, which of course makes me cry that much harder.
On Monday I was determined that I WAS going to have my meds, or at least a doctor's appointment within the week, by the end of the day--period. I started by going to various clinics, figuring it would be harder to tell me NO to my face than over the phone.
People seemed to want to help, but were constrained by bureaucracy & incomplete information. Every time a clinic refused me, they kindly let me use their phone to call my insurance. I must have spent 3 hours on the phone with various people with the AZ insurance alone. I've learned to double-check any suggestion or promise any one person makes, but I still ended up frazzled. It was frustrating as hell being told , "If you do XX, and go to YY, then you will get your doctor/meds," going through all the trouble of getting XX done, finding out where YY was & getting there, only to be denied anyways.
I finally lost it in an UrgentCare. First I was told that particular UrgentCare location wasn't contracted with my insurance. Once again they gave me a phone to call my insurance. This time I was more or less told that I had no choice but to wait until December, or until I lost my eyesight/got dangerously high blood sugar, whichever came first--because hospitals/UrgentCare won't give meds unless I'm in critical condition. It makes no sense to me that the system would rather wait until I'm critical & in need of expensive help later (and possibly be a burden on the system for life), rather than provide much-less-expensive preventative care now. So I started bawling from all the frustration.
UrgentCare was distressed at having a fat sloppy broad crying her eyes out in their lobby, so they made a few calls for me. They were able to accomplish in 15 minutes what I had not been able to do in 2 months, and convinced a local doctor to see me the next morning. Thank you, UrgentCare ladies!
My doctor is a young pup who looks barely out of boyscouts, much less medschool. He was a cool guy, and passed one of my 'asshole tests' by not minding that I used medical jargon & asked pertinent questions (my mother is an old-school RN; she raised me not to take crap from megalomaniac doctors whose egos are threatened by patients with a brain).
The doc even put in requests to my insurance for a mess of other work I've never been able to afford (like an eyecheck, and podiatry work), which I didn't even think to ask about. If they get approved, I'll be absolutely giddy.
2 months after getting on Arizona's health care (thank you, Arizona! Ohio, kiss my corpulent white tuckus!), I finally got to see a doctor on Tuesday, and now have enough meds to tide me over until next time I see the doc.
Biiiiig thanks to Xorrito, who was generous with gas money, thus enabling me to travel the length & breadth of Tucson to accomplish this goal!!
It's been a real pain trying to get any doctor to see me; it seems all doctors on the lists I was provided (I requested several times) weren't taking anybody new or wouldn't schedule to see any new patients until December.
The problem is, I had run out of my diabetes meds a while ago. I needed 3 medications, which combined cost less than $30 for a month's supply. But there was no way I could get these meds without a doctor's script, and there's no way to get that if a doctor won't see me (my old doctor in Ohio, a great guy, couldn't renew my prescription without bloodwork & a checkup-- which is completely understandable).
Don't get me wrong, it's very nice having a normal bathroom experience again, but when it's all said & done I'd rather have the unfortunate side-effect of the diabetes meds & keep my eyesight.
In the past 2 weeks I've really been feeling the absence of the meds, both physically & mentally. Oddly enough the blood-sugar hasn't been too bad. My eyes on the other hand, have been alarming me--I've been getting more & more near-sighted. I've been bawling over practically anything. I get really angry, or really sad, or really happy, and BOOM here come the waterworks. I'm a sloppy crier, too--tears all over the place, snot flowing, red-faced & blotchy, the works. It's embarrassing & frustrating as hell for me to lose control like that, which of course makes me cry that much harder.
On Monday I was determined that I WAS going to have my meds, or at least a doctor's appointment within the week, by the end of the day--period. I started by going to various clinics, figuring it would be harder to tell me NO to my face than over the phone.
People seemed to want to help, but were constrained by bureaucracy & incomplete information. Every time a clinic refused me, they kindly let me use their phone to call my insurance. I must have spent 3 hours on the phone with various people with the AZ insurance alone. I've learned to double-check any suggestion or promise any one person makes, but I still ended up frazzled. It was frustrating as hell being told , "If you do XX, and go to YY, then you will get your doctor/meds," going through all the trouble of getting XX done, finding out where YY was & getting there, only to be denied anyways.
I finally lost it in an UrgentCare. First I was told that particular UrgentCare location wasn't contracted with my insurance. Once again they gave me a phone to call my insurance. This time I was more or less told that I had no choice but to wait until December, or until I lost my eyesight/got dangerously high blood sugar, whichever came first--because hospitals/UrgentCare won't give meds unless I'm in critical condition. It makes no sense to me that the system would rather wait until I'm critical & in need of expensive help later (and possibly be a burden on the system for life), rather than provide much-less-expensive preventative care now. So I started bawling from all the frustration.
UrgentCare was distressed at having a fat sloppy broad crying her eyes out in their lobby, so they made a few calls for me. They were able to accomplish in 15 minutes what I had not been able to do in 2 months, and convinced a local doctor to see me the next morning. Thank you, UrgentCare ladies!
My doctor is a young pup who looks barely out of boyscouts, much less medschool. He was a cool guy, and passed one of my 'asshole tests' by not minding that I used medical jargon & asked pertinent questions (my mother is an old-school RN; she raised me not to take crap from megalomaniac doctors whose egos are threatened by patients with a brain).
The doc even put in requests to my insurance for a mess of other work I've never been able to afford (like an eyecheck, and podiatry work), which I didn't even think to ask about. If they get approved, I'll be absolutely giddy.
I could go on about how this country does medical care, but why? You know the spiel. Instead gratz to your urgent care person & the people helping you out. It's nice to think there're decent human beings still to be found out there.
I hope you & they get everything you deserve. Along with the insurance industry and... okay sorry.
Hang in there. Hell, with extreme luck and a rare dose of sanity, we might even have a viable public option soon, then we can all get decent care.