.: jus' fyrfli tings :.

healthcare in these united states

today my doctor screwed me. there's nothing really new about that ... that's sort of par for the course nowadays in these united states. but let me tell you exactly what happened and why i am writing about it today ...

i had a medication dosage increased just about 2 and a half months ago. usually, when i see the practitioners, they confirm with me which pharmacy to send my new prescriptions to. it's almost rote, now. so i didn't think anything about it when we didn't confirm this last time. i mean, it's in my file and we've talked about it so many times before. obviously, they'd send my new prescription to my usual pharmacy... right?

well, my regular pharmacy doesn't really reflect refills available until it's time to refill them. so i waited a bit to see if it would show up. it didn't. i kept waiting because ... well, the fact is that since january 20th, shit's been all fucked up everywhere ... and more so within the federal government.

why does that affect me? well, you all know we were military and that the hubster retired last year after 20 years in. he got a job right there in the same office as a civilian afterwards because neither of us were sure whether there would be options available anywhere else and since it seemed he was a shoe-in, we hung around waiting for it to happen. that meant we got to keep our health insurance. that also meant that because we live within something like 20 miles of a "Military Treatment Facility" (or MTF), we have to be seen by someone there. No choice of doctor, folks. Sure i pay little if anything, but i am stuck with whatever feeble attempt at care they throw at me.

and since trump took office in 2016, shit has been barrelling downhill ... accelerated within this last election period and even worse since january 20th when the orange menace started firing indiscriminately. the quality of care has hit rock bottom. i am just thanking every deity that exists that i don't depend on life saving medications like epinephrine to survive, unless i'd prolly be dead.

my PCM (primary care manager) told me the day she took over my file that if i got COVID she couldn't prescribe me ivermectin because the facility rules dictate that she can't. i mean ... ivermectin is an antiparsitic; COVID is a virus. it's also not something used regularly for people, so the side effects and interactions are not something anyone has paid much attention to. prescribing it off-use like that is reckless at best. in any case, getting all passionate with me about not being able to prescribe a medication for off-brand use just felt wrong. it felt like she was trying to send me a message.

and before you ask - yes, she is a white woman.

just to segue a bit ... when we first got here, i thought that internal medicine was the best place for me to get care because the family care clinic is mostly focused on family medicine and in my experience is usually filled with a ton of new physicians and pediatricians. they aren't likely to be able to give me the standard of care i demand. and when i first landed here, the doctor i was assigned to was amazing. he was a black man just a few years older than i am. and he knew... even after he left, the white man who took over seemed to more engaged with me than these white women. he seemed invested in diversity in his medicine and spent a lot of time asking me about my history and my experiences.

but they all leave ... probably because the military is a shit place. in all sorts of ways. but ever since that last male internist left, i keep getting stuck with white women nurse practitioners... and while i don't know everything about the role, i have had physician's assistants care for me before and i remember reading that nurse practitioners have the same or similar training just from a different angle (nursing instead of doctoring). but i gotta tell ya ... these women are fucking clueless as fuck. the once-bff already once caught an error in their prescribing and made me double-check with them about it. lucky we caught it too. that could have been pretty bad ... since he and i are no longer close, i dread the day when they make another mistake.

but i digress ... so i have this new prescription. at the time, i filled it anew right there in the hospital and i wondered about it ... i did. i wondered whether the prescription would transfer or what. i didn't really know how it worked. i filled it and started watching my regular pharmacy to see if it would turn up. well, it did, but it just didn't show as refillable by them. which ... fine ... it usually won't until it is within the refill window. and i waited as long as i could ... but last week i realised i was almost out and ordered a refill from the MTF. Then i called the clinic and explicitly said that i noticed it was not at my usual pharmacy, that i put in for a refill, but that i needed future refills to come from my regular. i thought they understood. i got the notification yesterday evening and asked the hubster to collect it today for me ... and he found that the incompentent nincompoops cancelled my prescription. and my regular couldn't refill it because their system showed it as just refilled.

yeah ... fuck me, right?

after a bunch of calls to the two pharamcies, it turns out that the clinic knew this would happen and did it anyway. i managed to get them to fix it ... but this is what i mean about shitty healthcare. they knew what they did would fuck me over and they did it anyway. and they are one of the hardest people to get on the phone so had i not ran around with my head cut off, i'd be shit out of luck tonight.

i hate it here.