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Kos Diabetes Group: After the eclipse [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-04-12  

Hello folks! Not a fact filled diary this week. I was in Ohio last week to visit family and view the total eclipse. I got home around dinner time on Tuesday and had to hit the ground running on Wednesday morning — Tai Chi class then the grocery store because there was nothing much to eat in the fridge so not much time to research anything. Instead you get my rant.

I don’t think I mentioned it, but before I left, I had asked my doctor to write a new prescription for me to get a CGM. I use them 3-4 times a year since my insurance doesn’t cover it completely and I pay $40/each out of pocket. It was a TOTAL fiasco. I asked the doctor using the fancy Patient Portal to write the script for one sensor with two or three refills. I got the notice from the pharmacy that the prescription was ready so I went to pick it up. There were two sensors so I had to put out $80. Not the end of the world but not what I had asked for. I take them home and the pharmacy had put their prescription label over the front of the box covering the sensor type. The box looked like the box I have used in the past — yellow and white with a butterfly. I opened the box and applied the sensor which looked exactly like all the other ones I’ve ever used. I wait the 30 minutes for the sensor to become “active” and try to scan it with my reader. I get a message that says the sensor is not compatible. Huh? I try again. Same message. I look closer at the box. Under the pharmacy label it says “Freestyle Libre 14 day” not Freestyle Libre 2 which is the sensor I have always used so now I have two sensors (one of which is attached to me) that I can’t use because they don’t match my reader. I send a message to the doctor’s office telling them there has been a mistake. The prescription was for the wrong type of sensor and could they write a prescription for a reader to match the two sensors I’ve paid for. I also stop by the doctor’s office the next morning to talk to someone on the staff. I explain the problem and they say they will let the doctor know. The next day I get a message from the pharmacy. They don’t have any Freestyle Libre 2 readers in stock and they will need to order one. I called them immediately and told them not to bother because I have a Freestyle 2 reader but the doctor wrote the prescription for the 14 day sensors by accident. At that point it had been three days and I still could not get any info from the sensor I was wearing so I ended up taking it off. I called Abbott and they kindly sent me one replacement Freestyle 2 sensor. I’m still out $40 for the second 14 day sensor I can’t use.

Just yesterday (after I had received the replacement from Abbott, used it for 14 days, removed it and went to Ohio for 5 days), I got a note from the doctor asking if I got the reader I needed. I sent her back a note saying that no, I did not get the reader I had asked for. The one that was ordered was a duplicate of the one I already had that was incompatible with the sensors she mistakenly ordered.

When I went into the doctor’s office the day after I applied the 14 day sensor, they pulled up the prescription and told me that the doctor had chosen the wrong sensor for the prescription. I hate electronic prescriptions because as a patient you never see the prescription. If I had seen it before it went to the pharmacy I would have known it wasn’t the correct sensor and it could have been changed before it was filled. However, they verified that prescription was only written for one sensor with refills. Why did the pharmacy give me two? I called my insurance company thinking that maybe they might only approve a month’s worth at a time which would be two but no, the representative said that if I only wanted one that was fine and I didn’t have to get two at a time. That meant that the pharmacist decided on her own without consulting me or the doctor to dispense two even though the order from the doctor said to dispense one. Had the prescription been filled the way the doctor had written it, I would have only spent $40 on the unusable sensor and since Abbott replaced the incorrect sensor I had attached I wouldn’t have really been out anything. So, I wrote up a complaint and sent it off the the state medical board questioning why the pharmacist dispensed more than what the prescription was written for. Yesterday, I got a call from the pharmacist. She wanted to know why I sent the complaint instead of calling them. (I didn’t know until after I picked up the two sensors and so couldn’t return them that the prescription wasn’t written for two at a time). She tried to justify why I was given more than what the prescription was written for and what they could do to make it right. I basically said that her job was to fill the orders written by the doctor and not to second guess about the quantity I was supposed to get. She wouldn’t give me 10 doses of antibiotics if the doctor only wrote the prescription for 5 doses. They just need to fill the order that they receive from the doctor.

I’m sure I’ll now get all kinds of grief from them whenever I try to fill a prescription. I may need to change pharmacies but I’m running out of options since I refuse to use CVS because they continuously change all of your prescriptions to autofill without your consent using up refills on the prescription and I already switched from the other Walgreens in town because I found strange pills mixed in with one of my daughter’s prescriptions. When I looked them up online it turns out they were some kind of medication for anxiety. A medication that no one in our house takes so it had to be mixed in with my daughter’s medication at the pharmacy. I did call them and they refilled the whole prescription free of charge. I really should have sent a complaint to the medical board for that. Who knows what would have happened if my daughter was in charge of getting her own medicine and she had taken one not realizing it wasn’t the correct pill.

Enough ranting. I did have a pleasant visit in Ohio with my mom and sister even though they make it hard for me to keep my numbers steady because they don’t eat at regular times (late breakfast, no lunch and late dinner). I got to see the total eclipse which was really cool.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/4/12/2234706/-Kos-Diabetes-Group-After-the-eclipse?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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