Okay so I’m supposed to write about the Productive app and I’ll get to that but first I need to share that we may be heading toward an apocalypse or some kind of Mad Max future sooner than we expected.
What really got my attention is what’s happening in pharmacies right now. We could start with the observation that a huge percentage of us are on meds just to stay afloat but I happen to be a fan of better living through chemistry and I’m not going to take that particulor fact of modern living on as an issue. I personally need small doses of three meds to keep my blood pressure down, one statin per my cardiologist, a baby aspirin, an Allegra because the statin gives me hives, and my favorite SSRI, Lexapro.
And I feel great!
I feel great and yet I am dependent on meds that are made G-d knows where. So the first sign of the Apocalypse is I went to Walgreens to get my meds and their pharmacy was closed at 4pm. There’s a really great younger woman who works there and she always overshares, as do I. The first time I came in looking for a silver eyeliner she sprang into action helping me navigate the cosmetic section and I left the store with the perfect eye pencil and a gift with purchase. Turns out this woman used to work for a big cosmetic somethingorother but lost her job during covid.
She explained to me that she isn’t too proud to work at Walgreens but most people must be because that and the low pay and they can’t find staffing and that’s also why they can’t keep their pharmacy open – they got 168 prescriptions behind and though the store manager was trying to help fill prescriptions (you heard that right), they could not stay open.
Whoa.
She was so nice that, not wanting to see me stroke out, she retrieved my meds from behind the locked pharmacy doors. But there were only half my meds ready. I’m on this automatic refill program and it doesn’t work. They automatically refill a random number of my prescriptions but not all of them so I have to make several trips a month to fill them all, or risk stroking out.
My insurance company will not allow me a three month supply. If it weren’t so iffy I would love to stroke out and give them the bill and say….if only you’d made it easier for me to get my meds I wouldn’t have to ask you to pay 300K for this admission – but that’s just a fantasy.
Instead I swing by Walgreens several times a month and visit with the woman who knows make-up and isn’t too proud to work at Walgreens (her words) and I just hope that the apocalypse decides to wait a few more decades, at least, to declare itself.
I had an interesting exchange trying to get meds for one of my littles with a UTI. The first step after hours is to find a 24hr pharmacy. I have my patients do this because I have limited time and they know where they like to shop.
The mom said Walgreens. I gulped and parked myself on hold knowing that I could be holding for a pharmacy that might not be open if they had to close early for the night. You can follow our texts below (I have permission).
It took over an hour to help this family and all I can say to anyone contemplating a career in medicine is that if you can go into pediatrics and manage a private practice, and if you take all your own calls 24/7 – you will have a front row seat to some of the most adorable kid moments like little ones licking cookies, throwing ornaments at trees and peeing on their beds before passing out. The kids and their parents will drive you crazy and also keep you sane. If this momma hadn’t held with me I’d have lost my marbles but as it was we had a decent amount of fun.
But it’s still the apocalypse.
If I hear supply chain one more time I’m gonna have to face the fact that our opulent American lifestyle with full shelves that never run low – it’s a thing of the past. We are now a nation on back order and we aren’t as resourceful as say, Cubans or Ukrainians. Those folks make do better than anyone and we will need to take a page from their resourcefulness when a full collapse hits.
When my patients reported that pharmacies are out of ibuprofen this week a chill went through me. Trying to find Tamiflu was also tricky. There was a moment when a pharmacist refused to fill an order for prophylactic Tamiflu for an exposed parent because “they weren’t sick”. Yeah – not yet they aren’t and I happened to know this parent has bad asthma and I’d like to keep them from getting the flu if that’s ok. I can’t blame the pharmacists for attempting to allocate resources but with my 1200/month health insurance premium it seems a bit BS-ey not to be able to get some Tamiflu when we need it.
I would like to entertain you with my first week using the Productive app but I’m going to end this post and get to that later. I have only a few hours of weekend left and Band practice tomorrow and I’ve got some music to work on (more on that later too)
In the meantime I’d put some Ibuprofen in your emergency kit next to the Potassium Iodide if I were you.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine.
Fuzzy Monkey 