Monthly Archives: March 2011

Yesterday I was poking around StumbleUpon and someone had sent me a link to a post titled “Marriage: In Which I Shut My Husband Down Once Again”. It’s a quick post, go ahead and read it. If you don’t feel like reading the post the essence of it is that the blogger’s husband had been the road for a few weeks, and texted her with a little sexy talk. “What are you wearing” was the question and she texted back a picture of her watch.

Apparently this is humor. I missed that but all of her readers did not. What I saw (and I did not read the comments until much later) was a husband who was lonely and horny in a hotel room in a strange city and a wife who was mocking him.

Apparently I was wrong and this banter between husband and wife is seen as adorable. I get it. I really do, not every marriage is the same. My friend Amy says I’m judgy, and to that I say, “Hell yes I am”.

There are things that I would never do. I would never sit at a dinner table and talk about Mr G’s shortcomings. As far as I’m concerned his only shortcoming is having married me. Not only would Mr G not appreciate it, but it’s uncomfortable for people to be around a couple who is working things out. Yes, I am Miss Fucking Manners, deal with it.

From a very pragmatic point of view I think that women do themselves a great disservice by talking about how tired they are from their very long days. I know what it’s like to drop into bed and feel the mattress envelop you almost like you’re floating. I know what it is to feel tired in your bones.

Ladies, turn the TV on for the kids, take a nap during the day and for the love of all things holy save some energy to fuck your husband in the evening. It’s part of marriage, and it’s part of marriage worth saving a little energy for.

Now Scout and her husband have some banter in the comments of her blog. I’m sure they’re very happily married, and I’m sure she’s a lovely lady. But I’m a giver, so I’ll share a little advice with everyone today.

Last summer I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. I went to see a rheumatologist after the pain in my hands became so unbearable that I was taking ambien and handfuls of Advil while attempting to uncurl my hands and sleep with them under my stomach. The Advil helped with a bit of the pain, the Ambien allowed me to sleep through worst of it. Sometimes. I was plagued with fatigue and felt depression moving in as my ability to function lessened.

I guess what I’m saying is that RA wasn’t about me feeling achy. It was ruining my life and my family’s life.

Untreated Rheumatoid Arthritis leads to the deterioration of bones, with many sufferers requiring joint replacement surgeries and many more ending up wheelchair bound.

Since August we have tried chemotherapy. It didn’t work. Steriods were useful, but the side effects are very difficult to manage. Simponi offered me relief after just a few months and now that I take it combined with hydroxychloroquine. There are parts of the day where I forget that I have RA. I’m looking forward to having a whole day when nothing hurts.

In October of 2010 I received a letter from United Healthcare. It says in part:

We are pleased to inform you that your prescription for Simponi pen Injector [I corrected their spelling on this one] has been approved for coverage…. is approved for coverage until 10/19/2011.

I’m attaching the letter for everyone to see. It is on a United Healthcare Letterhead. Since October I’ve been going to my local pharmacy and picking up my Simponi without issue. Since I hadn’t changed insurance from 2010 to 2011 I had to reason to believe that my prescription status would change. Looking at this letter no one reasonable would believe their coverage expired at the end of the year. On January 20, 2011 I returned to my local pharmacy to get my Simponi. The pharmacist was apologetic. “It’s not covered.” She said.

I stood at the pharmacy blinking back tears. I had a choice to make, my physical well being or my fiscal well being. I chose my physical well being and slapped down a credit card. Simponi costs more than $1,990 for a single dose. I decided that my health was worth nearly two thousand dollars.

To make a very long story short United Healthcare had switched pharmacy providers at the beginning of the year but no prescription cards were ever sent out. No prescription information is listed on UHC health cards. No letters saying “your preapproved prescriptions are no longer valid” were issued. All that was left was me standing at a pharmacy afraid to be sick.

When I got home with my medicine I called United Healthcare and I was advised that the new pharmacy provider was CVS Caremark. Up until January of 2011 I didn’t know that CVS was anything but a retail pharmacy. In my mind it’s the place you go at 2 am when your kids have croup because they’re open 24 hours. CVS is not the place you go on purpose, and it most certainly is not a trusted pharmacy in my neighborhood. The good folks at United Healthcare informed me that I’d have to get my medicine in the mail from CVS.

Really.

Apparently the Simponi pen (which incidentally must be refrigerated) needs to be delivered to my home by the UPS guy. Everyone knows that UPS is much more reliable than a pharmacist.

In addition to the half dozen medications I take to control Rheumatoid Arthritis I have three known serious drug allergies. Each of the medications has a long list of possible side affects as well as a long list of interactions. I’m not popping a tylenol here, this is serious stuff. CVS has given me the terrible choice of a vending machine style pharmacy or poverty.

Moving forward CVS Caremark has graced me with coverage of the Simponi pen for six months, but again only from their mail order pharmacy, and there will be no reimbursement on the pen I had to buy myself in the beginning of the year. Naturally I appealed this decision and the Notice of Action included this paragraph:

Your appeal for reimbursement of Simponi is denied. This medcation requires prior authorization prior to being covered under your prescription benefit plan. Speciality medications must me filled though a Caremark Specialty pharmacy. There are no exceptions regardless of the circumstances.

My experience with Medco was the exact opposite of my experience with CVS Caremark. Medco gave me a year of medicine where CVS gave me six months. CVS Caremark ultimately will cause more paperwork, more doctors visits and more expense for a company who thinks that they are geting a “deal” with them.

I should add that on February 8, 2011 my family received our Prescription Drug Program cards.

CVS caused me to give up two full days of my life to spend on the telephone with them. I won’t even begin to try and tell you who is answering their phones. CVS Caremark is leaving me unreimbursed for two thousand dollars worth of medicine that they know and I know that I need and that I’m entitled to under the plan. CVS has completely dismissed the need for pharmacists and assumed that medical needs can be tended to with shipping labels and telephone trees.

CVS Caremark is attempting to monopolize the supply chain, by providing insurance as well as the delivery of medicine. With CVS Caremark the consumer is left with bad and worse options. Having a pharmacist know what medicines you are taking, and what the possible interactions are is a critical part of healthcare. CVS Caremark has appointed UPS and FedEx as pharmacists and outbound marketers as overseers.

I’m going to pick up the phone and get a mail order pen for this month. I have huge doubts about CVS’s ability to deliver.

I’m going to beg you to please keep this in mind if you’re a benefits manager. I know that Human Resources and Benefits is a very important part of any business. CVS Caremark has so complicated the process of getting proper healthcare your employees will lose time at work if they are forced to deal with CVS Caremark.

I’ll explain the bad day part at a later date, but I need y’all to see what the kids and I saw on the way home from school.

And of course I went to take a walk and found this.

Two in one day. A rather fine day for YouTube I’d say.

Do me a favor and subscribe to me on YouTube when I blog later on about how sucktastic the day was you’ll know that you took some of the edge off. Okay?

I swear I just wander around town asking, “What day is it?”

I know that corporate taxes were due yesterday and that tomorrow I have to wear green, but I don’t really know exactly what day of the week it is. I’m not worried that I’m losing it because I’ve always been this way. I used to look at a newspaper each morning to find out what happened the day before, but newspapers have gone the way of the dodo bird. Which reminds me, I need to cancel my subscription to the LA Times.

Do you know what day it is? Do you care?

Am I the only person who neither knows nor cares what day of the week it is?

Alexander has worn glasses since he was five months old. I know there will be a million questions about how you get a five month old baby to wear glasses. I’ll address that another day, but in plain and simple terms: you just do. When your child needs to see, you find a way to give them vision.

When Alexander was seven he started asking about contact lenses. His doctor promised him that at nine he could get contacts. At eight and a half Alexander started nudging me to make his eye appointment.

We practically ran to the appointment a few days before Alexander’s ninth birthday. He had the standard exam and then the opthamaologist came into the room with a packet of daily wear contact lenses. She sat Alexander down in front of a mirror and showed him how to put in his lenses. Then it was Alexander’s turn.

It was a dismal failure. The three of us were tense in the room, I was sitting on my hands waiting for my son’s success so I could hop up and clap. Success was not on the horizon. Lining up a contact lens with an eye that’s out of focus is a really tough thing to do for an adult, for a nine year old it’s near impossible.

After watching Alexander try and fail at least two dozen times I asked if I could put his lens in. The Doctor seemed unsure, but I explained to her that I was with Alexander every morning of his life and that I’d be happy to help my son in the mornings.

It’s not easy to put a contact lens into someone else’s eye. It’s really tough when you have no experience with your own eyes. I’m sure a doctor of opthamology will guide you through this, but here’s how we did it every morning with my son’s right eye.

• Wash and dry your hands (really more soap is better)
• Stand slightly behind but next to him
• Use your left middle finger and hold the top eye lid just above the lash line
• Put the lens onto your right middle finger (be sure to check that it isn’t inside out)
• Use your right middle finger to pull the eye down from just below the lower lashes
• IMPORTANT: tell your child to breathe and open their eyes
• Quickly pull the top lid up and the lower lid down while using your right index finger in a rolling motion to press the lens onto the eye
• wait a beat or two before letting your child blink

For many months we had a pattern. I’d put his lens in each morning (Alexander only wears one) and he’d remove it every evening. We had a few stumbling blocks (one massive one in New York that I will post about later) but for the most part he really loved not wearing his glasses, and I was able to pop the lens in with ease.

After a few months of this we told Alexander that it was time for him to put in his own lenses. I wanted him to not get too frustrated (as we had at the doctor’s office) so I started by talking to him about it each morning for almost a week. Rather than just popping the lens in I’d say, “Now I’m pulling your eye open…” and I’d really talk him through each movement. After about five days of this I asked him to take a turn. He dropped the lens, he tore a lens, he pressed too hard and the lens flipped inside out. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Alexander got frustrated and we put it on hold until the next day.

This was a mistake that I’m cautioning you against making. We were smarter the next morning.

The next morning I had Alexander try three times to get his lens in, after three tries I went ahead and popped it in for him. We repeated this every day. By the third day Alexander had success, but it wasn’t consistent. There are plenty of mornings that he’s too frustrated to get the lens in himself, and it’s absolutely critical that I go ahead and put it in for him calmly, and that I remind him that I don’t always get it right the first time.

For the past month Alexander has put his own contact lens in every morning without needing any help. It’s been mostly stress free and a very real improvement for him.

I’d caution parents to only use disposable (one day) lenses. We did have a two week lens for a day. Yes, one day, it fell out and was lost forever. An expensive little lesson.

Those are words I’ve never heard when talking about a female predator.

Recently I read about a heinous crime. The reactions surrounding it all alluded to sexual assault being part of the jail experience. Rob people, get raped in prison, that’s the punishment.

One of the many problems I have with this is the terrible set up it is for men who are sexually assaulted. By taking a horrifying, painful and dehumanizing experience and turning it into the punchline of a joke or the accepted consequence of bad behavior we make it virtually impossible for men who have been assaulted to speak out.

I don’t care all that much about how we treat our prisoners because I’m an altruist. What I worry about is what we’re teaching our men and our boys. I worry about the unintended consequences.