Refill... Maybe

 It was time on one of my pills. I had enough left to get me through next Tuesday. This is Thursday, and late January - though these posts are dated so you could see that for yourselves. But it becomes relevant.

Ever since we've moved here it's been a fight with the store's system. It's automated, and its first priority is not filling pill orders, but instead not bothering the human staff. Usually these lines are set up so one calls in, says or punches in the number on the label, and you get an automated reply that it will be two or three days. It's a national system, and usually worked smoothly for us, whichever state we lived in, whichever state we called to refill from. We were snowbirds for a dozen years, after all.

These guys haven't been "normal" since we got here. In a bitter stroke of humor we still got reminder calls from our AZ pharmacy that we were now permitted to refill A, B, and G, or this time maybe D and L, just press the pound button. Of course they'd be ready in three days... in AZ! 

No thanks. No, really!

First, the bottle numbers did not transfer across all those state lines. We needed a human who could check out us, our history from AZ, and the computers would have had the information on dosage, number of refills, how many to take, insurance coverage, and everything else needed. For six months we had to figure out how to get through the automated system to reach a "Human". "Representative". "Pharmacist". "Real Person". ("Long string of loud cuss words!") Nope, blocked every time. But there was an app....

Hey, stupid machine, I don't do apps. My little flip phone isn't made for apps. I'm not made for apps.

We had to literally drive the 12.2 miles to the pharmacy to show them the old bottle at the counter to get a refill. Since they were originally prescribed at different times, they refilled at different times. Lots of trips. Gradually, we each had "only" three refill dates in each 90 day period. Various bottles had a different number of pills left, and we didn't waste them, but could call in several orders now at once.

Except....

The new orders still came across with AZ numbers on the bottles, despite informing our pharmacy this was a permanent relocation, XYZ just a few miles away was our new doctor authorizing them. So we still had to fight with the automated system. I finally got tired of yelling at a stupid machine and was relieved to discover that I could get a human if I claimed I was wishing to "transfer a prescription". Some genius in the company figured out their machine couldn't handle that complicated chore, nor could their app.

Eventually despite getting a human on the line, we were hearing we were out of refills. Say what? It seems our Arizona clinic quit authorizing them! With all the struggles to get the things, and despite having informed the new pharmacy that XYZ was our new doctor, they kept sending the requests to AZ. And perfectly properly, the doc there, not having seen nor heard from us for oh so many months, put their foot down and stopped authorizing refills. Meanwhile the MN authorizations were all there in the local pharmacy records, just ignored.

Having at long last gotten all that straightened out in the last couple months, you might think everything was smooth sailing.

Come on, would I be writing this is it were?

Finally having bottles with numbers on them in the local system, I made the call in this morning for my latest needed refill. The number was accepted. Great! My order will be ready to pick on on March 16.

WTF? MARCH?

You better believe I punched  "2" for "No, I can't frigging wait that bleeping long!" The machine immediately offered me the ability to pick them up tomorrow after 4 PM. 

This time I punched "1" for "yes, that's fine." When I head over to pick them up, I plan on mentioning the details of the call to whoever waits on me at the counter. By then it just might seem funny. Well, unless their other 2043 customers calling in refill orders today got the same glitch.