Pills & Hills
Feb. 24th, 2016 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aThe Cipro Connection. Four weeks ago today I walked in to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription for Cipro, and learned from my awesome local pharmacist that the fine folks at Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield were refusing to fill the full month that my doctor had prescribed. And, it wasn't an unreasonable prescription (barring the whole question of whether antibiotics are overprescribed). I've since looked up the standard advice for my situation, and it's very clear that a four week prescription is the default.
The fine folks at Anthem would only cover two weeks of my doctor's prescription, and this made me a little nervous, because I knew that it probably wouldn't get the job done. So I asked our pharmacist, "Is this going to be a problem when I come in for a refill in two weeks?"
"I've never heard of an insurance company refusing an antibiotic prescription," the pharmacist said.
Given that he'd quoted me a price of $200 for the medicine without insurance, I was still a bit nervous, but went ahead, got my Cipro, and started taking the poison pills.
The Cipro Continuation. Two weeks later I'm back in the pharmacy, and guess who's insurance company is refusing to pay for the pills? That'd be me, being refused by the death panel at Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield, who clearly are more worried about their bottom line than other niceties like doing what they're paid for and making sure their patients stay healthy.
My awesome local pharmacist is looking a bit frazzled, and says that he's been on the phone with Anthem for "way too long" and so has my doctor. Which sounds really damned ridiculous to me — that my doctor has written a really normative prescription, that I've got a "gold" level health plan, and that two of my care givers have had to waste considerable time trying to get said health plan to fill said normative prescription.
The pharmacist tells me that they have to charge me full price now, but that he's pretty sure an authorization will be in over the next couple of days, and that the pharmacy (not the insurance company) will then refund me.
I'm about ready to leave and come back in two days. I'd actually delayed starting the Cipro for two days so that I wouldn't run out while in Hawaii, and also so that I had breathing room if Anthem tried to pull a fast one. So I don't need it that day. But then they tell me it's just $30. Maybe the pharmacist had accidentally read me the non-generic price originally? I dunno, but that seems to be case from looking at pricing online.
For $20 difference, I'm not going to make my life difficult.
So I head off with two more weeks of poison pills.
(Has the pharmacy ever refunded my money? It looks like the answer is no, though Anthem did confirm they'd pay for the pills.)
The Cipro Conclusion. I've got just three Cipro pills left. I'll be done taking it tomorrow night. It's continued to make me mildly miserable. I'm perhaps not sick as much as I was about a week in, because I found a good blend of antibiotics and yogurt. I'm perhaps not quite as achey every single day.
But I'm still sick, and I'm still achey.
And the worse part is, I don't think it's done anything. I've been having another bout of my chronic problems, since last Friday or so — at least as bad as it's ever been. It's maddening and disheartening and maybe even frightening.
Pill Position. Cipro isn't the only med I've had going on. About 10 days after I started on the Cipro I went in to see my cardiologist. In January we'd upped my beta blocker to try and better control my blood pressure. It was making me unhappy because it was really damping down my pulse, so that I couldn't get a good cardio workout any more.
Well, Heart Doc said that it wasn't working that well for the BP either, so he dropped me back to my old level. My heart rate came back up ... and I realized how much it'd been making me tired too! So, there's one scant bit of medical happiness this month.
He also put me on a second med, which controls BP in a different way. He acted like it had almost no side effects, as long as you're not having kidney problems, so I took him at his word. My BP looks fine (106/60 at the moment), but I would have said the same after the previous change.
As for side effects: I realized that it's impossible to say if there actually are any, with the Cipro being a freight train smashing right through my vitals. Fortunately I'll be off the Cipro for three and a half days before I'm back to the cardiologist. So, I'll know if the aches and pains and such have disappeared.
Hopefully.
Exercise Extinction. But the Cipro ...
Its other main problem is how its impacted my exercise.
First, my doc had already suggested that I not bike for a while due to my condition. Then, the Cipro suggests that you be careful of any sort of exercise. Reading online, this has to do with the possibility for tendon damage, and it's really running that they're cautioning against ... and biking.
So my exercise has been subpar for four full weeks now. In particular, I've only biked when it was a necessity (getting to a distant doctor's appointment, getting to Endgame). Heck, I've even been walking to the grocery store, which is a mile-and-a-half trip, each way.
This last week I've found myself thrown into even more of a fitness funk by the death of my Fitbit. I'm still doing my best to get my 30 active minutes a day, but the lack of statistical information on how I'm doing definitely has an impact and makes me feel at sea ... (And unshockingly the Fedex "SmartPost" has missed its scheduled delivery of today for my new FitBit; new schedule was first Friday, not Thursday, which is typical for Fedex's pennies-cheaper-but-days-longer delivery system.)
Sadly, this all means that my weight loss of the last 11 months has stopped. I'm hoping that'll pick back up when I get back on my feet.
Hill Position. Because of the suggestions against biking, I haven't been doing my usual weekend biking, nor the occasional evening biking. Instead I've been doing some hiking on my free Saturdays (which has been most of them in the last month, between the end of Mary's Cthulhu RPG campaign and the start of my Clockwork RPG campaign).
My biggest hikes were the trail up to the big "C", the two fire trails in Strawberry Canyon, and the fire trail above Clark Kerr. I was actually surprised my how many there were. I always knew you could hike the entire length of our East Bay Hills, but I hadn't realized quite what a network of trails there was, mostly up behind the campus.
I'd hiked the Clark Kerr fire trail before, and it's OK. It's a bit too much "a trail on the edge of a hillside", and the last part is really steep. However, the two Strawberry Canyon fire trails are extremely pleasant. They're mostly shaded and tree filled. They're also quite long. And they also feed into trails that go to some of the local parks.
(I probably shouldn't be hiking either, if I wanted to be 100% cautious about exercising, but it's the balance I settled on, to retain my sanity.)
So that's been the one particularly pleasant thing in recent weeks: discovering all these neat trails quite close to our house.
The fine folks at Anthem would only cover two weeks of my doctor's prescription, and this made me a little nervous, because I knew that it probably wouldn't get the job done. So I asked our pharmacist, "Is this going to be a problem when I come in for a refill in two weeks?"
"I've never heard of an insurance company refusing an antibiotic prescription," the pharmacist said.
Given that he'd quoted me a price of $200 for the medicine without insurance, I was still a bit nervous, but went ahead, got my Cipro, and started taking the poison pills.
The Cipro Continuation. Two weeks later I'm back in the pharmacy, and guess who's insurance company is refusing to pay for the pills? That'd be me, being refused by the death panel at Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield, who clearly are more worried about their bottom line than other niceties like doing what they're paid for and making sure their patients stay healthy.
My awesome local pharmacist is looking a bit frazzled, and says that he's been on the phone with Anthem for "way too long" and so has my doctor. Which sounds really damned ridiculous to me — that my doctor has written a really normative prescription, that I've got a "gold" level health plan, and that two of my care givers have had to waste considerable time trying to get said health plan to fill said normative prescription.
The pharmacist tells me that they have to charge me full price now, but that he's pretty sure an authorization will be in over the next couple of days, and that the pharmacy (not the insurance company) will then refund me.
I'm about ready to leave and come back in two days. I'd actually delayed starting the Cipro for two days so that I wouldn't run out while in Hawaii, and also so that I had breathing room if Anthem tried to pull a fast one. So I don't need it that day. But then they tell me it's just $30. Maybe the pharmacist had accidentally read me the non-generic price originally? I dunno, but that seems to be case from looking at pricing online.
For $20 difference, I'm not going to make my life difficult.
So I head off with two more weeks of poison pills.
(Has the pharmacy ever refunded my money? It looks like the answer is no, though Anthem did confirm they'd pay for the pills.)
The Cipro Conclusion. I've got just three Cipro pills left. I'll be done taking it tomorrow night. It's continued to make me mildly miserable. I'm perhaps not sick as much as I was about a week in, because I found a good blend of antibiotics and yogurt. I'm perhaps not quite as achey every single day.
But I'm still sick, and I'm still achey.
And the worse part is, I don't think it's done anything. I've been having another bout of my chronic problems, since last Friday or so — at least as bad as it's ever been. It's maddening and disheartening and maybe even frightening.
Pill Position. Cipro isn't the only med I've had going on. About 10 days after I started on the Cipro I went in to see my cardiologist. In January we'd upped my beta blocker to try and better control my blood pressure. It was making me unhappy because it was really damping down my pulse, so that I couldn't get a good cardio workout any more.
Well, Heart Doc said that it wasn't working that well for the BP either, so he dropped me back to my old level. My heart rate came back up ... and I realized how much it'd been making me tired too! So, there's one scant bit of medical happiness this month.
He also put me on a second med, which controls BP in a different way. He acted like it had almost no side effects, as long as you're not having kidney problems, so I took him at his word. My BP looks fine (106/60 at the moment), but I would have said the same after the previous change.
As for side effects: I realized that it's impossible to say if there actually are any, with the Cipro being a freight train smashing right through my vitals. Fortunately I'll be off the Cipro for three and a half days before I'm back to the cardiologist. So, I'll know if the aches and pains and such have disappeared.
Hopefully.
Exercise Extinction. But the Cipro ...
Its other main problem is how its impacted my exercise.
First, my doc had already suggested that I not bike for a while due to my condition. Then, the Cipro suggests that you be careful of any sort of exercise. Reading online, this has to do with the possibility for tendon damage, and it's really running that they're cautioning against ... and biking.
So my exercise has been subpar for four full weeks now. In particular, I've only biked when it was a necessity (getting to a distant doctor's appointment, getting to Endgame). Heck, I've even been walking to the grocery store, which is a mile-and-a-half trip, each way.
This last week I've found myself thrown into even more of a fitness funk by the death of my Fitbit. I'm still doing my best to get my 30 active minutes a day, but the lack of statistical information on how I'm doing definitely has an impact and makes me feel at sea ... (And unshockingly the Fedex "SmartPost" has missed its scheduled delivery of today for my new FitBit; new schedule was first Friday, not Thursday, which is typical for Fedex's pennies-cheaper-but-days-longer delivery system.)
Sadly, this all means that my weight loss of the last 11 months has stopped. I'm hoping that'll pick back up when I get back on my feet.
Hill Position. Because of the suggestions against biking, I haven't been doing my usual weekend biking, nor the occasional evening biking. Instead I've been doing some hiking on my free Saturdays (which has been most of them in the last month, between the end of Mary's Cthulhu RPG campaign and the start of my Clockwork RPG campaign).
My biggest hikes were the trail up to the big "C", the two fire trails in Strawberry Canyon, and the fire trail above Clark Kerr. I was actually surprised my how many there were. I always knew you could hike the entire length of our East Bay Hills, but I hadn't realized quite what a network of trails there was, mostly up behind the campus.
I'd hiked the Clark Kerr fire trail before, and it's OK. It's a bit too much "a trail on the edge of a hillside", and the last part is really steep. However, the two Strawberry Canyon fire trails are extremely pleasant. They're mostly shaded and tree filled. They're also quite long. And they also feed into trails that go to some of the local parks.
(I probably shouldn't be hiking either, if I wanted to be 100% cautious about exercising, but it's the balance I settled on, to retain my sanity.)
So that's been the one particularly pleasant thing in recent weeks: discovering all these neat trails quite close to our house.