the trick is to keep breathing

What the actual fuCK is insurance these days

So I’ve been off of Cymbalta for what is now 14 days. I’m absolutely not ONLY feeling the lack of the drug in my current all-over State Of The Union, but I’m ABSOLUTELY going through withdrawal now which let me tell you for duloxetine is absolutely fantastic. Have a story.

• about 4/10 realize I’m running out. Play happy phone tag w my rheumatologist (they always want me to come in for an appt before they will prescribe anything; i kindly ask them to check my records where it says I’m immunocompromised).
• 4/17 Dr office finally agrees to call in a 90 day refill and will do another one when i get an appt any time during those 90 days.
• me: waits expectantly.
• last week: no drugs, no notification of new prescription, no nothing. I call the dr office. They submitted it to Express Scripts on 4/17.
• call ES. They have absolutely nothing on record for me more recent than a 2016 script.
• realize my other prescriptions have been filled through CVS Caremark.
• call Caremark. They have the other prescriptions but nothing for Cymbalta.
• call my Dr. They won’t submit another script even though ES has nothing on file. They tell me to call Caremark and have them contact ES to get the script.
• call Caremark / Carefirst / whatever it is. I discover that the other prescriptions were run up through my old Bridgestone COBRA insurance.
• I spend 2 hours on the phone bouncing between 7 different people trying to explain the situation.
• Apparently there is a special team that is supposed to handle my current insurance plan, but as I am transferred around, I apparently haven’t talked to anyone from that fucking team yet.
• I eventually manage to find someone who can transfer all of my recent refills OFF the COBRA and ONTO my carefirst insurance.
• I’m then tossed through three other people before I find someone who can tackle the missing duloxetine.
• turns out CVS/Caremark does NOT call out so they will NOT contact ES to look for the script.
• They recommend that I ask the doctor to submit the refill to a local CVS so that i can get the drugs sooner.
• i start laughing uncontrollably and remind them that the dr has already submitted a prescription and has absolutely refused to submit another, that the office is waiting for some insurance to make the request.

At this point, mind you: The dr has submitted a refill request and therefore won’t initiate anything. ES has not received anything on file for me at all, and therefore can’t do anything for me. CM will not contact ES. My literal only option here is for CM to contact the Dr for a new refill script and just PRAYING that the Dr will mcfuckin fill it.

• I finally - finally - land someone willing to take down the information and request a 90 day refill (through the mail service, because that’s the ONLY way i can have the request initiate from CM, since my dr won’t initiate and ES can’t) from my goddamned dr office.
• they recommend i call the Dr office and explain what’s happening so that they don’t reject the refill request.
• fuck
• the dr office doesn’t really seem to understand what I’m saying. They have me schedule an appointment and they’ll ask the Dr if they can submit another request to CM. I’m desperately trying to explain that CM is going to send a request just like please just make it go through and don’t complicate this any more.
• i am transferred to scheduling, where I sit and let the phone ring repeatedly for 15 minutes before I hang up and call back. The phone lines take a lunch break from 11:30-13:00. They were just going to let me sit there for an hour and a half i guess?????

HOW is this the way things are SUPPOSED to work? (Spoiler, it isn’t; I’m american, i get it.) just. Like. I HAVE BEEN ON CYMBALTA FOR OVER SIX YEARS. This isn’t some new medication everybody has to be woo-boo careful about. This is a fucking maintenance drug I’ve taken for a big portion of my adult life.

And I’ve been off it for two weeks. I hurt. My brain is dumb. I’m fucking exhausted. And I’ve wasted all morning on this. I’m so frustrated I want to cry and punch things.

what the FUCK.

• in 10 days I get the keys to my house. I am sort of in disbelief-land still.


• talked to the dr about my neck on Thursday. Turns out the news is better than I'd thought; the dr said that any kind of improvement is a good sign (I had been evaluating a 50%-75% improvement as "not 100% and therefore failure"; he said that 50%-75% is actually very promising), that he wants me to have a series of three shots with additional focused PT following the second shot, that whatever activity I can give it without pain will be good for it, and that he also wants me to stay on the painkillers until it is 100%.
  So the forward plan right now becomes using gentle exercise to remind my neck/shoulders/back what it's like to not be all fucked up, then to have another shot ~end of March/early Apr and a third ~end of Apr. He seems really hopeful that since it did respond to the first shot that subsequent ones will be even better. I'm trying to take hope from his optimism.


• I'm very happy to have been "cleared" to get back to working out, and am trying really hard to take it slow and gentle rather than just diving right in (and probably hurting myself again because my body is a jackass). I've been feeling very broken and lumpy lately - a very complex and complicated feeling, but generally not a good one - and I think this will help.


• meetings this week with the Japanese Overlords. I have my project review this morning; at the advice of a few of the managers I've added a slide pretty boldly and blatantly requesting the targets and direction we still lack in two main areas; I am not sure how this will go over. send help


• I've been playing FFIII. For now - until I make an official post - you can watch me here on tumblr. Basically this game:
  
  Yup.


• I still really want to write.


• DOINK! Final Fantasy Exchange 2013 is coming up. That's right, stay tuned for your yearly dose of "Sev has officially lost it". Timing this round: impeccable; sign-ups open the day I get the keys. clearly I am a professional


• what else do I even do anymore?

novel_machinist

crankyoldman

• The fucking battle music from FFVIII. What the everloving fuck: why did this make me cry? But it did. I think it was the moment I realized they were using the footage from the scene in Dollet where they're running from that giant monster and Quistis fucks it up with the machine gun so that Squall can escape. I have unhealthy feelings about this game.


• On that note: EYES ON ME. HOLY JESUS. Sobfest over basically a Squall/Rinoa songvid. I absolutely loved that singer.


• and on that note: MAN WITH THE MACHINE GUN. Will I ever not love this song in its entirely? JFMC.


• There were two pieces from FFIX, and even though that wasn't my favorite game, I'd forgotten (a) how poignant and pretty the music is and (b) that the game can still pack an emotional punch with some of those visuals.


• FFIV's Theme Of Love. It's a beautiful song from my favorite game. I probably would have liked a little more music from FFIV - they did a medley from I-III that was amazing and made me tear up a little, and it would have been nice to see the same for FFIV; it has the kind of very repetitive music I think would be suited for a medley. Then again I'm a little prejudiced about this game.


• Zanarkand. Fucking Zanarkand. I cried so hard at this one. The visuals were just really well done - people cry, and Yuna dances - and personally I think it's top five one of the most beautifully emotional songs in the entire FF series.


• THE OPERA FROM FFVI. I wasn't sure how this was going to play out, but I was hopeful, and it was absolutely amazing. The singers were phenomenal, and they put little clips of the Opera House from the game up in-between the singing parts, and I got pretty emotional seeing Locke running around in the rafters and Edgar and Sabin sitting in the chairs ("Why is everyone singing?") and all of that. Again, nostalgia time: my brother Jim and I pooled all our money to buy FFVI (FFIII!) when it came out and we played the hell out of it and we still joke about it. My brother: came to the Distant Worlds concert. I'd already been crying, but I sobbed at the fricking opera.
  (Side note: am I the only old person one who still wants to say, "Oh my hero / so far away now / will I ever see your smile"? I know they re-wrote/re-translated the opera in other releases of the game and in FFVI Advance and all, but the original translation will always be the one in my head.


• Terra's Theme is still like top three pieces of music forever, although they ruined it a little by playing credits through it. Maybe I'm just bitter because MY FAVORITE.


• The entire crowd singing SEPH-I-ROTH was a really good note to end on: I've never really been able to adore Sephiroth like most of the fandom, but One Winged Angel is still awesome music, and having the crowd sing was an awesome way to end on a good note with a badass game and a badass villain without taking itself too seriously. It was pretty awesome.

safety_caesars

ser_pounce_alot

deadcellredux

notraffic

justira

novel_machinist

crankyoldman

1. Let's say Sev is thinking of asking for either an X-Box or a PS3 for Christmas. Tell me about both of them: pros and cons, games I can get, which you would recommend for someone who is kind of a shitty gamer anyway. Let's go!


2. I have a bit of code I wrote a while ago that could potentially be used for a fic exchange. I'm not sure it's going to work for DOINK in any real context, but I've been itching to try it out on a VERY SMALL and VERY UNOFFICIAL scale. Basically how it works is: every person leaves 3 prompts; I make a master list of the anonymous prompts by number; you secretly send me 3 prompts you're willing to write; the code will assign you 1 prompt to write in a way that best covers as many participants as possible. Would anybody be interested in helping me test it out on a small unofficial scale? I could call it SevMas or something. My own personal boner exchange. I'm looking for a group of people, more than 5 but less than 15. Very low key, no promises, all I want is to run my damn code like a real loser, Sev/EXCEL OTP forever.


3. I have been feeling very strangely fannish lately, probably because I've been imbibing on a lot more source material than usual: this is mostly the fault of safety_caesars/vrazdova. We are replaying FFX; I started a random replay of FFVIII when I was sick; we just watched Gundam Wing and I am rewatching it in English while I run. I'm kind of on fandom overdose. Any thoughts or liveblogs or meta posts or, god, I don't know whatever that people want to see? And/Or: if I start spamming my thoughts on GW episodes and writing massive essays on Quistis/Rinoa, please don't defriend me right away.


4. WHAT'S UP

• Yeah, I missed yesterday, so stay tuned for double posting today (IT'S SO INTENSE)


• Yesterday's post got some really good comments and if you're interested in more discussion on academia, I am too, so please feel free to keep it going.


• HONK/NaNo update:
  • 10436 words
  • 1491 words per day average
  • 1231 words behind as of today.
  
  For the first week of NaNo, not too bad at all. Oh, HONK. I wish I knew how to quit you, for values of "quit you" that include "writing incest porn."


• I really need to get my glasses re-fitted. Don't know what happened, but I keep tweaking them on my face. Maybe my script changed. OH GOOD.


• FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.