I really hate insurance companies. Why do I have to prove the same thing EVERY month? My life is difficult as it is without the additional crap that is heaped on me by them; but I am getting ahead of myself.
Several years ago, my liver almost failed and the cause was one of my main medications. Apparently this medication creates a byproduct that builds-up in and can damage the liver if created in high enough quantities. This is usually only a problem for people that have a resistance to the drug and have to take very high quantities of it in order to get the desired anti-inflammatory results. I am NOT one of these people. In fact, my body is VERY receptive to this medication; so receptive that I only have to take the minimum dosage to get the maximum affect. This astonished not only me, but my doctor. With my life and the way things go for me, I just took this as one of the small miracles that I will be given in my lifetime.
Well, mix me and a small miracle for any amount of time and there is bound to be a disaster. That time came when I started to feel sick and appear jaundiced (a lot of yellow in my skin). My doctor was stumped. Several blood tests showed that my liver enzymes were out of range to a ridiculous level and that my liver was shutting down. Queue the tests to figure out what is going wrong. After trying numerous tests, me removing MANY things from my diet and getting a 2ft needle stuck in my side by the Joker (another story), and my specialist doing some research; I was told that there was one possibility that might fix the problem. My doctor told me that the one medication that was working with me so well might be the cause of my issues due to possible by-products. A blood test later and this was confirmed. Apparently I am one of those very few people that creates large amounts of a particular by-product while taking this medicine. It was this by-product that was causing my liver so many issues.
Lucky me, I not only show that I am an oddity among oddities again; but I also get to take another medicine. I give my sad face to the doctor; take the new prescription directly to the closest pharmacy; and turn the script in so that I can get rid of the liver failure and yellowing skin. Within 30 seconds of giving the pharmacist the new script I was told that I couldn't take the medicine because of an interaction with one of my current medicines. So I explained the situation to him like my doctor had explained it to me. The new medication is technically for gout. It isn't supposed to be used with my medication (the one causing liver issues) because the gout medication binds with a by-product of that medication (the one causing my liver issues) and becomes useless against gout. That is fine, though, since I don't have gout! In fact, I WANT that binding to occur so that I don't need to have a liver transplant! The pharmacist looks at me with that "lights are on, but nobody's home" look and says he has to call the doctor.
Anyways, this was my foreshadowing of things to come. Thanks to people that can't think outside the box, I must have the pharmacist manually enter in this prescription EVERY month, get turned down by the insurance because of the interaction, have the pharmacist call my doctor, then have the doctor fill out the SAME form he/she filled out the month before JUST so I can get one of my prescriptions.
EVERY MONTH...REALLY!?!
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