Okay, so I am adding this just to remind everyone not to forget the humor in life, so I hope this makes you smile. My story doesn’t start to funny, but hang in there. I have 2 type 1 diabetic daughters, and some monkey in a suit set policies in place with our insurance so that we can only fill our “long term” prescriptions through an online pharmacy (yes we are trying to appeal, but so far we have only been denied). It just happens that this is the time of year when both my girls get all new scrips from their doctors. So on January 2nd, when our flexspending account was loaded back up my husband mailed all 19 prescriptions off to be filled. Then we waited. I watched as our supply of test strips dwindled and i opened our last box of pen needles, the ones that i kept in case of emergency, the ones the girls say hurt when they use them. I became obsessed watching our account online to see if they recieved them, and then when they finally did i logged on several times a day to check the progress. The company sat on the prescriptions for over a week before they finally emailed me to say they had been delayed. So of course i call the company and was told “we were going to call you in a day or two, we wanted to make sure that you wanted all of these filled”. Well duh! No i just felt like mailing you a $3 parcel just for the heck of it. After explaining that there were for 2 T1, and that we couldn’t go a day or 2 without, I was assured that the pharmacy would get the scrips and that they would “rush it”. Pan to the next day(monday) when my husband gets a call on his cell from the pharmacy “do you want ALL of these prescriptions filled?”. Yes my husband explains, and now things are getting dire. We are down to 200 test strips, those could be gone within the week. We are assured by the pharmacist that our box would be sent out overnight, that night. The next morning i again log onto our account, and the status is updated to say that it will be shipped that day (not the night before). We finally get confirmation from the delivery company that it is going out the next day, and will be sent overnight. So here i am 4 days from when it was supposed to be shipped, and FINALLY my status says the magic words “out for delivery”. I now have planned my day around the truck delivery schedule, because they won’t leave the box if i am not here since it needs to be refridgerated, so i am sitting by the window, avoiding the piles of laundry and the dishes that need to be washed because heaven forbid i should miss the knock at the door.FINALLY the anticipated white truck screams by my house heading to the culdesac to flip a u-turn and i race to the front door like a kid on christmas morning. I am practically jumping by the time the delivery man reaches my front steps. “Thank God you are here! I have been WAITING for this package” i blurt out. The delivery man starts to chuckle and says “alcohol?”. It is only then that i glance down at the box and realize that it is from my father-in-laws winery. My loving father-in-law has generously sent us a box with wine through priority mail. Now i am thoroughly embarrassed and the delivery man is convinced i am lush. I ask pathetically “is there another box?” and feel the need to explain my utterly absurd behavior.
And now here i am an hour later, with both a box of wine and a box full of insulin laughing at myself, and hoping that i made the delivery mans day a little brighter. I hope that all of you too can find some humor in this and that it will make your day a little brighter. Who knew needles and insulin would get me so excited!
I get so excited when anything diabetic comes to my house. Medicine, needles, cases, meters you name it. Did you and your girls do the happy dance when the insulin came?
I can so picture this. When I reorder insulin and supplies with plenty of spares in the house everything goes off without a hitch, but as soon as I cut it to close on reordering stuff is when something goes wrong. I’ve bought supplies at retail because I got caught short and have even dipped into my doc’s physician samples of insulin.
I hate to sound paranoid, but normally i try to keep 2 months of supplies backstocked, just incase. Our oldest daughter was just diagnosed a few months ago, and with juggling getting her prescriptions from the hospital at first, and now switching over things to the online pharmacy our stock just really got depleted. The sad thing is, the pharmacy waited so long that i can already re-fill most things, so i am going to fill them on monday and try to build up my stocks again.
Probably the funniest part of all this is is actually the note i had taped to my door while i took kids to school and swim lessons. It read
"Please leave the box, I NEED that package today"
I just laugh thinking about what the delivery man would have thought if he found that waiting for him at the front door!
You’re fairly new to this game BUT, you can do without strips if you must. Cover only for the food getting eaten, nothing more. Not ideal coverage, but no harm done either
You could also get a generic meter at Walmart which for under 30 dollars ($20? $10 ?) will give you all the readings you could ever require. Got 100 strips, plus the meter for that price and I only used it as an emergency backup meter.
b) Goto the local pharmacy and tell them you need an EMERGENCY SUPPLY of insulin/supplies from your local pharmacy. They will give you a 24 hour supply per federal law.
And btw, you can reuse any of the syringes/pen tips until they actually become dull. You can make one last a ridicilously long time with no serious problems of any kind. A week, ten days or even longer…
“Goto the local pharmacy and tell them you need an EMERGENCY SUPPLY of insulin/supplies from your local pharmacy. They will give you a 24 hour supply per federal law.”
Stuart, this is something I didn’t know but could be useful one day. Do you have a citation or reference I could use, or does everyone except me know this tidbit? (I assume this is true only in the US…?)
Wow, i didn’t know about that bit of info either, i will keep that in my back pocket for future reference. One of my girls has what would be considered “brittle” diabetes. She has been know to climb, or plummet for no apparent reason, and very rapidly. she is the one that i worry the most about not having what we need. the other has pretty stable numbers, and in a pinch we probably could go with strips if absolutely necessary. I was prepared to go and just pay out of pocket for strips if i needed them. I did know that you can reuse the pen needles, and we did have a ton of syringes still too, so we weren’t actually in panic mode yet, just enough to really irritate and i am a habitual worrier so this whole situation just fed right into it (i am working on that character flaw). Thanks for the tips! it is always good to have back-up plans, and back-up back-up plans, because lets face it, you just never know!
Stuart, excellent info. Thank you! A “Plan B” is a necessity and finding relatively easy problem solving options is super helpful. I will be sure to pass this on. You are quite right that syringes/pen tips can be used again…just need to be good about hygiene so that sites do not get inflamed. Hygiene does not have to be alcohol wipes, just basic good old washing is good enough when re-using.
Kind of everywhere. We have our main stash in the house, but we also have an emergency kit in the car, and the girls carry lot of supplies with them as well. They also have an emergency kit at the school. They both also have extra kits and glucagon in all of their sports bags, and the coaches all know where the glucagon is. We even have a small stash at my parents house, and they live 3 hours away. the stuff there is just things that we have left behind when we visit, but it starts to add up.
Thanks… I have not heard back from my pharmacist but she was off duty for several days. We’ll keep trying, but I think the concept, the idea is “intact” at least. Insulin, syringes for certain, strips… maybe, maybe not.
just read this story, made me smile! not funny how they made you sweat it out like that, do you need all of this filled now, really!!! glad the wine came at the same time sounds like you could use it at that point! best wishes! amy
