No More Tonsils

Before:

After:

And, of course, it wouldn't be complete without a Prescription Story to go with it.

They prescribed a medicated "lollipop" that you suck on and it numbs your throat.  Dandy!  But only one pharmacy in the area carries them.  No problem.  I go to the pharmacy drive thru and hand them the script plus my insurance card, since I have never been to that pharmacy before.  She goes away and comes back about 10 minutes later and hands me back my card and says, "you can't get these on insurance because they are a compound."  I have no idea what that means but said ok, thinking I will use my PayFlex card that is for our FSA.  Then I think to ask, "how much are they?"  She leaves and comes back 20 minutes later, to tell me they are about $6 a pop.  That's fine, I'll come back and get them shortly.  I leave to go to the other pharmacy for the rest of the prescriptions.  

That was when I happen to wonder just how many the doctor had written the script for.  I didn't look and I didn't think to ask.  Hopefully it wasn't going to be 20 or so.  No matter, I was paying with my PayFlex card.

I go to the next pharmacy (and you might be asking yourself, at this point, why I didn't just fill all the prescriptions at the one place.  A valid question, to which I don't have an answer.  I have no idea.  It just didn't occur to me.) which I don't use anymore but I decided to this time because it is a lot closer to home, and Surly Teenager was home alone.  Probably just sleeping, but still.

So I go to pharmacy #2 and give them the scripts, and have to come back in an hour.  No problem.

I go home, Surly Teenager gets up and has some soup, drinks some juice and goes back to bed.  

I go back to pharmacy #1.  The doctor only ordered 6 pops, with a refill.  Good deal.  I whip out the PayFlex.  Oh, oops, so sorry, says the clerk.  We can't accept PayFlex right now.  Some problem or another with Mastercard and Visa.  Lovely.  But on the bright side, it should only be a month or so and the problem will be fixed - of which I could care less because I don't use that pharmacy.

Back to pharmacy #2.  The antibiotic isn't ready.  It is a class that is close to penicillin, of which Her Surliness, is allergic, and there could be a reaction.  So they had been trying to get a hold of the doctor for a different medicine.  

Now, you may be wondering why did I not tell her surgeon that she was allergic to penicillin?  What kind of mother am I?  Of course I told them.  It was on her wrist band.  It was on the wrist band I had to wear so I couldn't take home the wrong surly teenager.  We were asked by at least 5 different people, are you allergic to anything other than the penicillin.  And yet, we get a prescription for an antibiotic that is closely related.

Any who, I pick up the pain medicine that is ready. And pull out cash to pay for it.  This completely confuses the clerk.  He says, "but I show you are on express pay".  I explained that at one time, yes, I was on express pay, it was automatically setup to charge the card on file.  The problem being that since I don't use that pharmacy anymore, that was an old card.  It was long expired and I had no interest in setting up a new express pay account.  I just wanted to pay with cash.  Of course that was a major production that took about 30 minutes for them to figure out how to do.

Later in the afternoon, I return to pick up the antibiotic.  I was so sure that by then they would have gotten hold of the doctor, I didn't even call and check first.  They did get ahold of the doctor, they did get an alternate medicine.  Only, they don't normally stock that medicine.  She only had about 1/4 of the prescription, enough to last 2 days, and they are ordering in the rest.  And OF COURSE it was a different clerk, so when I went to pay with cash, I had to go through the whole express pay drama AGAIN.  And I get to go back again and go through it all ONE MORE TIME.

But.  I'll you what.  No matter how annoying it all was, NO - I DO NO WANT GOVERNMENT SPONSORED HEALTHCARE.  I shudder to imagine the unholy MESS that would be to unscramble.  At least with my current plan, I know there is hope to eventually get it all worked out.