I get my medications - there are a lot of them - by mail-order pharmacy. At the beginning of the year, my insurance company switched from using Express Scripts for that service to using Medco Health. All of my prescriptions transferred properly, except one: fexofenadine, the generic for Allegra. Due to complete incompetence on the part of Express Scripts, I am now down to a week remaining of that medication and I have to jump through very twisted hoops to get it. Here’s the e-mail I just sent to my physician:
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I am officially grumpy. It’s partly from hunger - I’m trying hard to stick to my diet today. I had a Slim-Fast shake for breakfast and a similar (off-brand) shake for lunch; I am going to have a piece of fruit on the way home and then a smart dinner followed by a cookie or a brownie.

I’m also fed up with the apparent incompetence of every doctor I try to contact. My dermatologist, who is not on my insurance and whom I normally pay out of pocket, recommended that I visit a specific person on my insurance to get a couple of moles removed. I tried to get my PCP’s office to fax a referral over to the other person’s office. That failed a few times. Then when the PCP’s office insisted they had faxed it, the other dermatologist’s office insisted they hadn’t received it. I’ve been trying to get this done since the beginning of December, and I absolutely have to get the moles removed before spring. So I just called my regular dermatologist’s office to ask how much the surgery would actually cost, and of course they can’t tell me exactly. Even if I do manage to get a referral to that other recommended doctor, I would have to visit twice - once for her to say “yup, your main doc was right, you need these two removed” and again for the actual surgery.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with a psychiatrist, too. I want to start seeing a therapist and I have somebody all picked out but my insurance requires me to see a psychiatrist first. I sent the list of local people to my PCP and she e-mailed me back with who she knew and didn’t know. None of the ones she liked are taking new patients, so I’m trying to see somebody I’ve seen before but not for five or six years. I left him a message on Thursday and got no response, so I just now left another message.

And I had to interpret training all day today, so my brain is shot in addition to all this frustration. (I have no idea how I managed to remember to call these people.) Definitely. Officially. Grumpy.

Added: Forgot to mention that the hives are back. They’ve been creeping up on me for about a week, and now I think I’m going to have to take prednisone for a couple of days. Fuck