Ecoengineering Wizardry – July 31, 2023

spwilcen

Warnings: language, bile, examples of shameful corporate idiocy.

Recently had a script refilled.  Been on the same drug [no real fun in it] for five years now, having it filled for the last two years by a “love to hate them” discounter of national repute.  Sharp pencils at the prescription insurance emporium after balking for a year determined I might possibly live for at least ninety days, so allowed as refills could be for three munce.  The script is only a little more expensive than dirt, only because the list of “possible” side effects from the prescribed potion are a trifle more staggering than those “possible” from directly ingesting dirt on a daily schedule.

For two years, running the all too familiar gamut – patient contacts physician “portal” software- portal software alerts physician’s office staff – physician’s lackeys diddle practice management software – practice management software notifies pharmacy scheduling software – pharmacy software schedules pill packing and vial validation, pharmtechs scan Universal Squiggly Mysteries into pharmacy fulfillment software – and finally pharmacy dinero-collection software texts patient cellphone (message charges may apply) – it’s been laughable because the lengthy part of the process has been contacting my “healthcare provider” via the “patient portal” an on-line process laughably declared a huge convenience to patients – economical, and fast, fast, fast. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. IA? Get arfking real!  Howsit, this simple process, pretty much dot-to-dot-to-dot, requiring zero heuristic risk, jams the A-B-C part of telemedicine?

My love-to-hate pharmco to date always filled the script between eye-blinks. Probably because it’s just a matter of scooping dust bunnies off the floor into a child- and adult-proof radiation-grade container. They might even have for the most often prescribed meds, an automated pill counter.

Painless, more or less, really. Until this time.  I received pharmco text notification winky-blinky.¹ Assumed my script ready and planned to stand in line to pickup the refill at the same time (on the same day) I completed several other errands eleven miles west of the wide spot in the highway I call home.   Paused to read the text.  “ready on …” which was a WEEK later.  A week?

I should have seen the rest coming.

Errands had to be completed. And they were. Independently of a convenient trip to pharmco retailer. A visit to pharmco would be separate, special, and therefore so, so convenient for me. 

And so it was. Arriving home after the required second trip west, emptying the bag with fourteen pages of “we know you’ve been on this med for five years but here’s what you need to know…” two receipts, and a couple of 8×11 pages of “while you’re in the pharmacy, whyn’t you also check out our first aid supplies and then pop over to our megastore and shop for your lawn and garden, grocery, automotive, electronics, and shop and hardware needs?” what do I find in the bag?

THREE vials of script, thirty-days’ supply in each.  Of course, in radiation-resistant plastic vials large enough each individually to hold a year’s supply of drug.  SEALED with that plasticized foil requiring an acetylene torch to remove. THREE times the plastic. Three times the frustration and inconvenience to me. Landfill will shrink. Sea turtles will be thrilled, I am sure. [If you don’t understand, kiddies, that’s high sarcasm. Negative hyperbole.]

I get it.  Mechanized prep in the pill factory; statistically perfect dispensing is thirty pills, so thirty in the oversize,indestructible vial.² Zip-zop for the pharm tech/pharmacist. (Assuming three times thirty as manageable as eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety.) Why not, I ask, “card” the pills, as is done for birth control pills and steroid tier dosage? Say, ten in a strip? Pharm tech then bags three strips or nine strips. No PLASTIC vials. Pop-from-behind card perforations.  Mechanical. Manufacturers are happy. Pharm tech is happy, he/she/them/they get to count “one-two-three,” or “one, two,…eight, um, uh, nine?”³  I am happy. A tiny bit, sure, but less eco footprint.  No broken wrists opening vials. No broken fingernails tearing-away at hermetri-tamperproof thermolite seals. I can even “tag” strips with begin dates so as not to wonder, “Did I take my snakespit this morning?”

Ah, technology!  Save that every “improvement” we see is not for the consumer, not for the planet, not for the middleman,⁴ but for the ease and cost savings for manufacturers.

I saved the literature.  I guess this evening, I can entertain myself writing letters to corporate wigs at discounter-you-love-to-hate and pill manufacturers.  I will explain my alternate rationale and politely ask, “What is wrong with your marty-effing heads?” Neither letter will accomplish anything. 

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¹ In the time expected. Which means waiting for my healthcare abuser almost doctor, staff to smell my automated patient request, rubberstamp my request allowing notice to be shipped to the pharmacy. Which happens only about the time I pick up the telephone to call healthcare provider and company to ask, “Whaddeff-up, peoples?” Farther down this automated process tag-team, the pharmacy still almost beats the doctor’s office.
² Packaging machinery does not even have the decency to stuff the gap in the vial with cotton to halt pill rattle-and-break.
³ PharmD gets to recount strips, verify drug and dose. See? Everybody happy!
⁴ Geeze-o-dogwitch, Marcoswooft, “inclusivity”?  Really?