Pharmacists Keep Capes and Tights in the Back.....

Here's the follow up to Babygirl's medication shortage crisis:

Wegmans pharmacy contacted me yesterday to let me know two different things.
     #1)  We can't pick up more medication until Thursday because we just got a 5 day supply.
     #2)  Our insurance won't pay for the medication at Wegmans. We have to mail order it, so #1 is COMPLETELY irrelevant.

Alrighty, then.  We are leaving for the beach on Friday. We can't wait for a mail order delivery, and I have no way at all of predicting whether THAT pharmacy has any tacrolimus anyway.

Mentally wincing, I asked, "How much is it if I pay cash?"  "Let me run it through with a Wegmans discount card.....It's about $90." "Get it ready. I'll pick it up after work tomorrow."  I've paid higher co-payments than that, seriously, so, go for it.

Then this morning, a note appeared on my desk, "Medicine Shoppe called. They have 300 1 mg tacrolimus."

Now, if you read my post from 2 days ago, you'll realize that this was the ONE single pharmacy I did NOT call. But the pharmacy is a block from my new office, and the pharmacist just started working a couple of days at our hospital pharmacy as well. She was on duty for the beginning of my frantic search, so when she put her cape and tights on an flew back to her home base, she checked the shelves THERE.  (Keep in mind that this means that this woman had to remember both my maiden name AND my married name, connect them together. AND link it to Babygirl, and then recall where I work NOW. And she's NEW.)

I called her. Three hundred pills is a 50 day supply, plus the 30 days we have waiting at Wegmans. Like the others, insurance won't cover it.  "How much for cash?" "$84.50, pharmacy cost." Screw asking anybody else to deal with this at this point - I put my doctor hat on and "called in" the prescription over the phone, and picked them up on my lunch break. And then....

Since insurance didn't cover ANY of that, I got back on the phone with CHOP. This time I reached our nurse practitioner.  The transplant team is VERY aware of the problem, unlike the general nephrologist I chatted with on call.  She sounded.....tired.  Maybe a little afraid.  "Do you have enough?"  I told her what I'd done and she was frankly relieved.  She has some resources, but things are getting tight.  I asked her to send a request for a 90 d supply to our mail-order specialty pharmacy.  "Do they have any?" she asked. "I don't know.  I hope so."

So.  Here I am, contemplating the fact that, by the grace of God, I am in a position where I can throw down $200 for an emergency expense and not worry about what I'm not going to be able to pay for this week, or whether we'll eat.  By the grace of God I have a pharmacist who went the extra miles needed to make sure that Babygirl has what she needs to weather the crisis, and that I can smooth the path a little.

And I'm saying prayers for those who can't. Because somewhere, I am ABSOLUTELY certain, there is a mother weeping RIGHT NOW because she cannot, cannot, cannot solve this problem.

DeeDee