2024/05/08

Wednesday, May 8, 2024 (#129)

Woozle's Journal

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Errand of Disappointment

Let's start with the requirements:

Get everyone in the house up-to-date on COVID vaccines, especially 2nd youngest (who needs to be officially "up-to-date" for a job in June).
Pick up a prescription for a household member.

The scene: the CVS with a drive-through pharmacy pickup nearest to us

Parts 1 & 2

Our story starts yesterday... well, actually it starts late last year when he first found out about the job. Yes, I have been trying since then to get around to getting everyone boosted, and hadn't really pushed on it until now because I'd been variously super-busy and depressively overwhelmed.

Actually, it starts on March 25 of last year, when we collectively got our last boosters. The only reason that happened was that a local friend had discovered a free walk-in clinic, and we dashed over there as quickly as we could; prior to that, there had been walk-in clinics near us, with plenty of signage.

A booster had come out since then, but since we weren't at all sure where to get it or how much it would cost (times four)^[1], I had deprioritized it -- until Z's upcoming job meant he had to have it. ...but then, of course, other things got in the way as previously noted.

Part 3

Actually, it starts this past April 14, when I wrote the following in a Discord channel:

Finally got around to trying to get COVID booster shots for the fam. It... didn't go well.

I first tried to book it at CVS, but their site (a) insists on deadnaming^[2] me, and (b) was confusing -- I think it was telling me that the only locations near us with appointment-slots available are on Hillsboro Rd. and way north on Roxboro (neither being locations I'm familiar with), but there wasn't any way to ask "when is the next appointment available at any of {list of locations}" and it didn't even seem to be listing the one location that was heavily advertising their "free COVID-19 vaccine the last handful of times I've been there picking up prescrips...

...so I moved on to Costco, which seems to be pretty wide open this week.

...and I worked out a possible date/time with everyone.

...and then I started trying to make an appointment for ONE of the FOUR people here, and it was... an overwhelming long page full of questions. ...which I might have slogged through if it was just once, but FOUR TIMES AGGH NO.

I honestly don't know how I'm ever going to make this happen.🌧️

On gathering further information, because it was unclear exactly which vaccine(s) we needed to get in order to be "current" -- there being a recent one which isn't (or wasn't then, and apparently still isn't, maybe) available for people under 65 and an older one from last year which is not widely in stock, I wrote this:

It looks like this now becomes a 3-step process:

go to a pharmacy and ask questions (because they don't have email)

go back home and make appointments (somehow managing not to stab self with keyboard when I see those forms)

bring everyone to the place at the time.

The fact of my home server with all my passwords and stuff being down for awhile didn't help, either. At that point, I had to just back away from the whole thing for a bit.

[negvox says] My life is a shambles and I'm not even any good at the thing I sometimes get paid for, which is why nobody will hire me.

Part 4

Coming back to the almost-present, though: we had a prescription to pick up, so I figured this was my opportunity to go inside (instead of using the drive-through) to ask about the vaccine.

...despite their web site's claim that all locations have Novavax in stock. (Nobody at the pharmacy even mentioned this as an option.)

It turns out they don't have any vaccine in stock, and Pfizer hasn't been shipping any for quite awhile (the theory is that they're gearing up for the next vaccine, which makes sense), and the only way to find out who has it in stock is to... (wait for it)... make an appointment online.

(I tried again just now to make an appointment through CVS, and my motivation just about gave up after the 3rd page of questions. I just want to know who has it, and then maybe just go there and find out if they're backed up or not, so as to avoid all the form-filling.)

But anyway... that was actually the second item on my agenda. I had checked the pharmacy web site before going, to make sure they had received the prescrip, and they had -- so item 1 was to pick it up.

They said it hadn't been filled, but they could fill it and I could pick it up in about an hour. So I said I'd be back.

I didn't have time/energy to go back yesterday, so today we went by there on our way to Fresh Market.

After checking their records, they asked me what the name of the drug was because they couldn't find it under $family_member's name -- but of course I couldn't remember... and the only way I could think of to get it was to log into the CVS web site and look it up. That, however, required the following steps:

Log into my passwords site.
- ...which required doing the TOTP thing with Authy, which I had just set up this morning^[3].
  - Attempt to copy the TOTP code and paste it in -- no go.
  - Attempt to remember it and type it in by hand -- woops, expired.
  - Trying to be clever, I thought I'd wait until right after a new code appeared... but it was taking a long time, so I tried to type it in by hand again -- nope, expired.
  - Third time, I somehow got it.
- Attempt to copy my username -- Android/Firefox refused to let me select a range of letters. (I really, really want a mouse-mode option on mobile.)
- I could maybe remember the username and type it in, but the password was randomly generated and impossible to remember. At this point, Sandy suggested she take a photo of my screen showing the login credentials, and then I could transcribe from that.
- (At about this time, we were reminded that the pharmacy closes for lunch in 7 minutes. We'd been there at least 10 minutes, working through all this.)
- That worked, and I was able to log into my prescription account at CVS and confirm the name of the med -- at which point I handed the phone to the checkout person...

...who checked and said it wasn't ready. Then she said they couldn't fill it because (this happened the first time we tried to pick up a med there) the prescribing doctor isn't covered under Medicaid.

(Note that: it's not that the medicine isn't covered. It's that the doctor who prescribed it isn't covered, so it can't pay for anything that they prescribe. This is profit-driven BS.)

Having dealt with this issue before, I told them "we know -- we're paying cash" -- so the checkout clerk went back and checked again... and only then was I informed that they were out of stock, and had been for some months.

Note that when the doctor sent in the prescription, there was no feedback from CVS telling her that it's out of stock and not likely to be in stock anytime soon. That seems, to use a technical term, fucked-up.

I noticed that Walgreen's has a chat widget on their web site, so I asked there if they could tell me who has it in stock -- but apparently there are rules which mean that because it's a "controlled substance", they won't put that information in the central database (hurrah once again for right-wing moral fucking panic). Only the individual locations have that information, and of course they don't have a chat widget; you have to call or attempt to make an appointment at that location (because, as previously noted, there's no "show me the places near me which have this in stock" option).

I don't do phone calls, especially if I have to "call around" and can't just conduct the business I need by calling one number. It's not worth that "feeling like I want to die now" feeling.

So basically we're going to have to lean on a non-local friend who sometimes makes phone call for us, because he doesn't mind as long as he has the time for it.

Follow-up, May 10

An online friend did the requisite calling around, and found a place that has it in stock. The prescribing doctor was notified, sent in the prescrip... and it was put "on hold", reason unspecified. We had $friend call again, and he found...

Yes, it was once again because the prescribing doctor isn't on the Medicaid system...
...but this time, the med itself is $460. So... paying cash is not really an option.

Footnotes

↑ There were a lot of indications that the booster could be free for low-income people, and I can only think that this means it is covered by Medicaid. Sometime this year, NC finally adopted the Medicaid expansion after a decade-plus of our "conservative"-run General Assembly's fighting tooth and nail against the evils of "Obamacare". I applied on behalf of all four of us, because I wasn't sure who had what (there were indications that maybe one or both of the kids already had it? I didn't see any indications of somewhere you could check online to see what your status is or what benefits you get). There was no clear outcome from the application except that some weeks later, we started getting large packets welcoming us to our healthcare plans under various providers, so yay? ...all except me, that is -- and I can only think that it's because I'm the only one who has steady income (and it was steadier when I applied back in November than it is now). "Conservatives" will say that people need to work in order to "earn" benefits like, you know, basic living needs (food, clothing, shelter, and medical care) -- but then they also turn around and say you can't have those benefits if you have an income, because you should be buying them (which there is still no way I could afford). But anyway...
↑ It has my name correct sometimes when I log in (I think I may have fixed that recently), but when I look at "family prescriptions" or try to book an appointment it shows my deadname, with no way to edit it or even remove that person as a family member (I only used CVS very briefly when I first started HRT, until I found out how expensive they are), that I can see.
↑ It's good that I finally got this set up -- it only just occurred to me this morning that this would be quick way to alleviate some security concerns I had about where that is now hosted (it was on our home server, under a couple of layers of security-by-obscurity, but no longer) -- but it's situations like this (including the password-copying thing) which make me very leery of using good security practices myself.

[medicaid-1] There were a lot of indications that the booster could be free for low-income people, and I can only think that this means it is covered by Medicaid. Sometime this year, NC finally adopted the Medicaid expansion after a decade-plus of our "conservative"-run General Assembly's fighting tooth and nail against the evils of "Obamacare". I applied on behalf of all four of us, because I wasn't sure who had what (there were indications that maybe one or both of the kids already had it? I didn't see any indications of somewhere you could check online to see what your status is or what benefits you get). There was no clear outcome from the application except that some weeks later, we started getting large packets welcoming us to our healthcare plans under various providers, so yay? ...all except me, that is -- and I can only think that it's because I'm the only one who has steady income (and it was steadier when I applied back in November than it is now). "Conservatives" will say that people need to work in order to "earn" benefits like, you know, basic living needs (food, clothing, shelter, and medical care) -- but then they also turn around and say you can't have those benefits if you have an income, because you should be buying them (which there is still no way I could afford). But anyway...

[cvs1-2] It has my name correct sometimes when I log in (I think I may have fixed that recently), but when I look at "family prescriptions" or try to book an appointment it shows my deadname, with no way to edit it or even remove that person as a family member (I only used CVS very briefly when I first started HRT, until I found out how expensive they are), that I can see.

[authy-3] It's good that I finally got this set up -- it only just occurred to me this morning that this would be quick way to alleviate some security concerns I had about where that is now hosted (it was on our home server, under a couple of layers of security-by-obscurity, but no longer) -- but it's situations like this (including the password-copying thing) which make me very leery of using good security practices myself.

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