Some days you can't win for losing

Another griping post.

Thank you for reading Jasini’s Thoughts and Ideas

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Some of may remember back in February I went to the emergency room because of my high blood sugar.

Well, at the time, they gave us a prescription for a month’s worth of metformin, and told us to see our doctor. Well, for various reasons, we don’t have a regular doctor any more, and haven’t for about a year, so I’d been without metformin and other meds since then.

They gave us a suggestion for a nearby clinic that takes Medicaid. We looked around a bit to see if we could find someone nearer that takes Medicaid, and ended up setting up an appointment within the time period. Which they then canceled on us, setting up another one on April 17. Note: That was more than three weeks later than we want, and I’d be well out of medicine by that point.

I had been stretching my medication anyway, only taking the morning dose (mostly because I kept forgetting the evening one), and was able to stretch it until today.

Today we did try to find some way to get my prescription refilled. First we tried Urgent Care, but that didn’t work because I was neither injured nor in pain (which lets me know that if we had gone back in February there instead of the emergency room, they could have done nothing for us anyway). My husband called the doctor’s office again to see if there was anything we could do, and they told us that we could just go to the office and be a walk-in. Which is not something we were told before. However, when we got there, we couldn’t do a walk-in, because we were not established patients, and we had an appointment for April 17, so we should come back then. Yes, after we told them repeatedly that we had an appointment for the 17th, and were told we could come in as a walk-in, they informed us of that appointment like they were telling us new information.

So, we finally ended up back at the emergency room, because no one else would see us.

Fortunately, there were only a couple people there this time (unlike in February, when it was full to overflowing). My blood sugar was about 250 this time. Not great, but an improvement. They gave us another week’s prescription, and one for a glucometer, which should be covered under Medicaid.

Meanwhile, my husband had been talking with the representative from the insurance from Medicaid, and she had been able to work with the clinic to get us an actual appointment tomorrow morning. So, hopefully that will all work out.

We were on our way to the pharmacy, when it (the pharmacy) called us to let us know that a glucometer (and strips and all the rest of the paraphernalia) were not covered under Medicaid. My husband had been talking with the representative all along, so we knew it was. So, more back and forth with the representative (Thank you, Dana. You worked hard for us, and kept us in the loop). She called Mo Health to discuss it with them, and a particular brand was what was covered. The pharmacy had that brand, but everyone talking to everyone else, and still no one could figure out what and what wasn’t covered.

The pharmacy eventually called back, and told us we needed to call the other locations of that pharmacy and see if they had a device that was covered. She didn’t give us phone numbers or anything, just the locations. Honey, I already know the nearby locations for those pharmacies. That doesn’t help.

Well, we’ll see what comes of things tomorrow.

And don’t try to tell me that the meters are cheap, and we should just pay out of pocket.

We aren’t on Medicaid because we have any money. I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to swing a tank of gas later this week. Some months are more flush than others, but we paid the personal property tax on the car last month, so this month is much tighter than usual. I at least got the electric and water paid. I should be able to swing the phone bill, but we might have to get an advance from our son to cover the car insurance.

Some days I can just feel the finances tightening a rope around us.

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