You have to wonder how things ever get done. Today is a perfect example. I had to leave early to hit the pharmacy that my doc prefers. They close at 6 and I don’t get off till then. I’d finished the story I had been working on earlier in the afternoon, that was after a number of stops and starts.
So I leave at 4:30 and head into DC. That is always a trek as it takes two trains from my office to get to where I needed to be in DuPont Circle. I arrived in decent time, right before five.
I get to the counter, ask for my meds and then it starts. The pentacle of fuckupery.
The amount they were trying to charge me was three times the amount I was charged on my previous visit. I asked the middle eastern man to check into the discount card I’d brought in previously.
Twenty minutes later he tells me that it wasn’t honored for either medication. I handed over my prescription benefits card.
Declined.
Three calls later to the card services staff, they told me to try the card as credit instead of debit.
Declined. Again. We checked the balance. $600 in the account. Enough to pay the $110 they were trying to charge me.
The woman at the card services looked at the transaction at her end. The card was declined because the pharmacy didn’t have the system set up for the transaction to show as a prescription. Now answer me this: how can a pharmacy have a system set up not showing a prescription as a damned prescription??????
I told the young man what the card holder was seeing. He had no idea what was going on – no clue. None whatsoever. “I will let the owner know.”
I asked him to tell me what I was supposed to do without my medications. Without blood sugar meds, I run the risk of high blood sugar. It has been a problem that we had just gotten settled. I was finally getting my blood sugar below 200, or down to 100 even. When it had been running as high as 500 at times, this was miraculous. Now I am on my way home without medication. Without the security of knowing that after my current stash is out, as of tomorrow morning, I could run the risk of this same high numbers scenario.
So I am livid. I knew something was up last time I got my meds there because my card was declined but at that time the amount was manageable. The amount of time I have wasted and the money I lost from being off the clock are not worth this headache. I left there so mad that I wanted to punch something. I was cussing as I headed down to DuPont station. Fuming!
And I realize that my overreaction had less to do with the pharmacy’s fuckupery, it was because my friend died this weekend. I was shocked to realize this. I didn’t think I was taking this so hard.
They told me at work this morning that Sean passed over the weekend. My mentor, my friend, my buddy. I won’t see his big old smiling face anymore. I won’t hear his crazy stories and jokes. I can’t stop by his desk and go to an impromptu lunch.
So, no, things didn’t come together. And they may never again. But I can tell you this: I won’t let a moment pass by without saying hello, or thanks, or allowing myself to feel the greatness of the moment. Or the sadness left behind in the wake of the loss of a friend.
Will the medication debacles get resolved? Yes. But I won’t get a chance to say thanks to Sean. Life is shorter than we realize. I need to make changes so I can live as large as possible. I’ve lived too often in the shadow of others – even though some family and friends would argue that I stand in no one else’s shadow.
It’s time for me to cast the shadow. And when I do that pharmacy had better look out!!
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A Nomad Named Daniel 
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