Round Two: Drake Wins the Day

Are you ready for round two?  Home from the hospital on Sunday.  Doing really well.  Monday goes really well, and I acquire the accessories necessary for no bending, lifting or twisting (walker, toilet rails, shower chair). 

Woke up Tuesday morning with PAIN, BIG PAIN. 

{Here's a short tutorial on how 'pain' is measured according to the medical field:  Pain:  1 - 2; can be completely ignored.  Pain 3 - 4; pain can be ignored if mind is engaged in something else; Pain 5 - 6; OK, this can't be ignored - need to seek some relief; Pain 7 - 8; Seriously, do something NOW, it's all I can think about.  Pain 9 - 10  Oh, Lord, this is unendurable.}

I spend a lot of time at Levels 3, 4, 5 due to my foot issues.  So, when I say BIG PAIN, I'm talking 7+. 

OK, so I woke up Tuesday morning at 6am with BIG PAIN.  And it was nerve pain hurting in all the places I supposedly just had fixed.  Talk about despair.  My first thought was:  the surgery to repair my back and free up the nerves hadn't worked.  Moaning, crying, panting, rocking, and so forth while Drake works at making me as comfortable as possible.  We waited until 8am and called the surgeon's office.  First, they tell me not to worry, this is 'normal'.  It turns out the nerve block the Doc used during the surgery had worn off, and I was feeling the inflammation of the nerves he worked around.  Help was on the way.  The medical assistant immediately sent a steroid pack prescription electronically to our local Walgreen's.  This was about 8:15am

9:00 comes and goes 10:00 comes and goes.  Drake calls the drug store twice and finally says, "What the HELL!  It turns out Walgreen's has this little woman in a soiled house dress,  wearing sagging support hose, dirty house shoes with bunion cutouts, with smudged half-glasses perched on the end of her nose, pecking away in her computer cubicle entering all the electronic prescriptions that have arrived for the entire Phoenix region into Walgreen's pharmacy computers.  You can't get your prescription filled at Walgreen's until the electronic prescription sent in by your doctor is manually imputed into the Walgreen pharmacy system.  And, it's not just Walgreen's, folks.  It's EVERY pharmacy.  There are no electronic links between your doctor's office and the pharmacies.   

Meanwhile, the BIG PAIN is ratcheting up and and up and up.  I think I hit an "8" on the scale at one point.  Oh, and these aren't like labor contractions, there are no 'rest periods' - it's just all pain, all the time.  Drake is alternating between anger and angst.  About 11:00am, he just goes up to the doctor's office and cajoles a paper facsimile of the electronic prescription out of them.  He heads for Walgreen's, and then GETS TO WAIT FOR 30 MINUTES to get it filled even though Walgreen's has supposedly 'had it' since 8:16 am! 

At 1:00 pm after being in Level 7+ pain without any let up since 6:00 am, I finally get the first dose from the steroid pack prescribed to take the inflammation out of my agitated nerves.  At 3:00 pm - poof, no more nerve pain.   

You can take this as a cautionary tale.  Here's the take-away:  Get paper copies of any prescription you plan to fill either immediately or as future treatment for a medical 'event'.  Electronic submission of a prescription is a minimum of a one-half day wait or longer to get it in your hands.

And in my eyes, Drake wins the day by defeating the big demons with ingenuity and persistence.  Yea, Drake!