Today has been a bad day for me from an administrative perspective. One of the things that I learned about dealing with a long term, intensive health care problem is that one of my main jobs is health care administration: making sure doctors put in the proper orders to the proper places, knowing the specs for his port and medical equipment, ensuring the correct prescriptions are called in and filled by the right pharmacy at the right time, and managing appointments with the correct care provider in coordination with each provider and the family’s schedule and Eli’s preferences. I think that covers most of it.

This morning I went to give Eli his Monday’s med and realized that the prescription we had sent to a mail order pharmacy hadn’t arrived and the bottle was empty. We had called in payment info two weeks ago, so when I asked why it hadn’t been filled yet, their reply indicated their ignorance that we had called in our payment info, per their request.

I didn’t have time to wait the 7-14 days it would take to receive the mail order to send his meds, so I called our carr coordinator to have a prescription called into the local pharmacy. Later I checked to see if it had been called in, but not that the local pharmacy could see, so I decided to see if I could have the one at the hospital pharmacy transferred. The hospital pharmacy said I would have to get the local pharmacy request the transfer, so I called the local pharmacy again, explained the situation, only to discover that they did have the prescription, but couldn’t get insurance coverage for it until April since it was filled elsewhere. So, I called the mail order pharmacy again and, happily, a different person answered (I had yelled at the first person who was determined to keep to the script, hadn’t listened to the information I had told him, and didn’t want to give me real answers to my questions). I summarized the problem, discovered that they had, indeed, begun to fill the prescription, thus preventing me from filling it locally, so I requested them to stop the refill. Fortunately, she not only was able to stop the refill, but she called the local pharmacy and made sure it was transferred and able to be filled. Of course, when I went shopping at the store in which the local pharmacy was located, I completely forgot to pick up the prescription and had to return before I actually managed to get the thing in my hands. On the upside, the 90 day mail order quantity was transferred, too, so I have extra time before I have to fill it again. 😏

Whay about the unclaimed furniture? That story begins a couple days ago when we were driving Eli to the hospital for a post-surgery MRI, early in the morning, before the sun was up. We were driving in a center lane of the interstate when the car in front of us swerved unexpectedly. We couldn’t see why until a large, dark, square object came to our attention, but not soon enough to get around it, although we tried. We hit it, but were able to continue on our way, but knew it had at least done something to the airbag sensors. We later heard something dragging on the road, as we approached the hospital. Fortunately, the three of us were fine, physically. This is what we saw later:

We filed a report with the highway patrol with whom we had communicated regarding the hazardous object. It turned out that it was someone’s sectional that hadn’t been secured properly. Too bad we don’t know with whose insurance to file a claim, so we file one with ours, and pay for the cost of repairs through increased premiums for the next three years, or pay for the damage ourselves. At least Eli got a tour of the highway patrol office and badge out of the experience.