F*#&%ing Spammers & Meds

Someone please tell me why anyone would spend like two hours leaving 144 spam comments on a weblog and not even put the correct URL for their website? Good grief, like I'm not going to notice that many new comments...

We went out to eat with my parents tonight, it's nice being able to chauffeur them in my own car. Especially right now, my mom is recovering from a pelvic fracture from fainting from too much blood pressure medicine and my dad's back is just giving him hell. He's going to go to a pain management guy starting this week, he's had several back surgeries and a hip replacement in recent years and is not getting any help from his orthopedic doc, he also got overmedicated and was having dizzy spells. This new guy is an anaesthesiologist who can try some different things. I printed a bunch of literature for him on neurostimulation, which we're all hoping will work.

PLEASE let us get a President who is "interested in science" in office, and who is not a lackey to the drug companies. I'm trying to figure out this week how I'm going to pay for my four prescriptions, which even at Sam's Club's discount pharmacy prices are still going to be about $150. Sparky is telling me to just "do without" some of my medicines, especially my Ambien (which is $80 a month), but I'm not sleeping hardly at all with it so without it really scares me. I've tried several times to go without it for a week or so and I basically didn't sleep at all. I've never been a good sleeper, I think it's mostly the MS causing the problems, but any help at all is a blessing. My parents are paying a fortune for their medicines even with Medicare, and a gap policy. I think between the two of them they are also going to see a doctor about 2-3 times a week which ain't cheap either.

The last time one of my prescriptions expired the doctor tried to get me to come in for an $85 visit (even though I just had my physical a few months ago), and it took three phone calls to get her to renew the damn thing over the phone. I have about 8 prescriptions that I've been taking for years now, it's not like I'm asking for anything new and exciting. And I think I've just realized when I switched pharmacies last time that the new pharmacy is not giving me Fiorinal with codeine, just Fiorinal, which might explain why it hasn't really been working as well. Of course, that's the one I had to fight for over the phone, my doctor has a bad habit of not writing things exactly correct. I also need to see if I can get my Prozac split into two 20 mg pills a day instead of one 40 mg, I think the giant dose is making me sleepy.

However, I did find one way to save on two of my really mega-expensive medicines. Merck, who makes my migraine medicine (Maxalt) and the only allergy medicine I can take that doesn't contain an antihistamine (Singulair) has a patient assistance program that actually works. Because we are both self-employed and don't have insurance or Medicare, I am actually eligible for free medicine from them! And I really, honestly got it, three months worth of each. Maxalt is about $100 for 6 tablets (which is considered one months worth) and the Singulair is over $100 for a months worth. I wish the Ambien people has a program ;-) The most expensive medicine I ever got was some weekly self-administered (shudder) shots for my MS, which were about $2000 a month (I had real insurance at the time). Lucky for my finances, they didn't help me and actually made me feel worse.

My dental bills (and Sparky's soon-to-come ones, he's not in pain so he's spacing his visits further apart) are going to be the price of a semi-decent used car I'm afraid. Or a really killer Mac setup with all the bells and whistles. I'm thinking now the dentist must have hit a nerve or something with the injection on my last visit because the area he worked on is STILL numb and tender. I need to call his office again and see if there's anything they can do about this. And the mystery tooth is still worrying me.

My 30 day Carmax warranty is about to expire and I need to call them like today to get a few little things checked. Supposedly I still have part of the original manufacturer's warranty left also, it was 3 years and the car is a 2002, but the salesman wasn't sure how many months were actually left on it. One of my windshield washers isn't squirting, the light in my glove box is not working, and I think my headlights might be a bit out of alignment. It has Xenon headlights, even brighter than halogen, so I don't want to blind people. They're very nice with my night vision problems, though (which are mostly RK related), driving at night isn't as much of a nightmare anymore. I need to post my review of the car, just to get it out of my head. And speaking of cars, my first pricey insurance payment is due on Monday (gulp), I was paying just liability on the antique car but upped it to collision on this one. At least I have a good driving record, knock on wood.

I've almost gone through my first tank of gas, I think the tripometer is at 200+ miles or so, so even with the bigger V6 I seem to be getting much better gas mileage than my old 4 cylinder car did, which is nice. I haven't even tried the remote gas lid release yet, I guess I should do that before I take it in for service.

Excitement for today - I leaned on the panic button on my remote accidentally tonight while the car was in the garage still, scared the living crap out of both of us.

Posted by Morticia at August 04, 2004 03:43 AM | TrackBack