To be clear, they aren't my meds, they're my mom's, from her various hip and face surgeries. She didn't have any resources in Reno to safely dispose of them, so I brought them down here and it's just random chance that I hadn't gotten around to it yet. But one of those meds is also one of the meds I was on during my ER hallway spa days.
eta: Doctor S is checking back in and clarifying some things and I love this careful methodical little man so much. I can feel my BP dropping every time my phone pings and it's him.
I'm not saying don't use them, it's just a worrisome amount of amateur guesswork and calculation that goes into deciding how much to take that is a little scary. I'm hope you can find a dosage that works to tide you over, for sure!
But it is ridiculous that you have to do this!
After 45 minutes on hold I got
somebody
to answer at UCSF General Medicine A Clinic (where JZ's primary care doctor works).
I explained the situation and she looked in the files and saw that indeed we had called
many
times but JZ's doctor was booked all day seeing patients.
I explained it all very carefully and said, somebody needs to go interrupt her between patients for at least one minute and call the fuckin' Pharmacy and rectify the situation. (The Pharmacy had called her as well and she hadn't responded.)
The person I talked to seemed to grasp the actual details of the issue and was going to get a Nurse Practitioner to re-route the prescription to UC's Walgreen's pharmacy and then also talk to JZ's doctor's nurse.
So...maybe that will work. At least somebody is trying to do something other than make a note in the system that we called again.
Yeah, fingers crossed. Jesus.
Dr. S is also calling them--he did some detective work and found that there's a regional shortage of 2 mg tablets, so the wording of the prescription might be the problem--controlled substance, must be dispensed exactly as written, so if it says one to two 2mg tablets and all they have is 1mg or 4mg tablets, they have to hand it back and say, "Not in stock."
He also found that almost nobody has updated the pharmacy hours listed on their websites since Covid, so the on campus one I thought closes at 7 closes at 6, as do most of them, and a lot aren't open at all over New Year's weekend. The best option may be to call an entirely new carefully worded prescription to the 24-hour Walgreens on Castro. He's on hold waiting to talk to the practice manager now.
I haven't worked for him for at least a dozen years; he's just doing this out of sheer goodness (and cantankerousness; nothing refreshes and invigorates him like fighting a bureaucracy). One of the greatest strokes of random good luck in my life was getting assigned to him as a temp worker back in '92.
The fact that you can have contacts throughout the local medical establishment and still have to work so hard to get proper medication is terrifying. I’m glad it looks like it’ll work out for JZ. I’m just thinking about the thousands of people dealing with cancer who didn’t temp for a bureaucracy-fighting doctor and who don’t have a Hec to run to multiple pharmacies or a granny bag of replacement meds. Could someone please tell the powers that be that the War on Drugs is over (we lost), and doctors and pharmacies should be able to hand out whatever they deem necessary, 24/7?
Timelies all!
I hope your resources come through for you, JZ, and I'm pissed off on your behalf that you've had to do things this way.
