Annoyances

One of my least favorite things to do is having to deal with the ordering of medical supplies. The companies will give you too much of one thing and barely give you enough of another. When Evan had his feeding tube it was the bags for his feed pump that were the choke point. We got 30 and that was it. There were always one or two bags in the box that were bad for one reason or another which prevented us from building up any kind of minimal surplus.

At least with the feeding supplies we did not have to wait for authorization each and every time we needed a refill. Evan's test strips for his INR testing machine are that way. When we first got the machine we got a big box of 48 strips plus a plethora of lancets (we have still not run out of our initial supply of those). As the number of strips dwindled I started looking for a place to get refills. Once I found a place we had to jump through all the new patient hoops. Once all that was done I found out that I could not order a nice big box of 48 strips, those were only for doctor's offices. I had to get Evan's in boxes of 12 and I was only given one box at a time.

I thought I was doing good this last time by starting the whole reorder process when we were halfway through the box. We test every other week, so ideally the box of 12 would have lasted six months. Evan had a string of highs and lows that meant testing a lot more frequently and we were down to one lone test strip. I was about to call the company to chew them out for taking so long (although it was most likely my insurance's fault) when I finally got the call that they are on the way. This time I am getting a bounty of two glorious boxes of 12 test strips. I am giddy with joy right now.

Tags: INR, test strips, insurance, frustrations