Friday, April 15, 2011

Corn allergy Dramatics

The girls have the week off of school for Spring Break.  Of course, I promised them a trip to the zoo as well as a few new parks. 
Unfortunately...Mr Violets caught a nasty bug that nixed our plans early in the week.  And then it rained.  The girls and I rallied though, and were set to go today if all else failed.  Even if it rained. 
Until I came down with another UTI last night.  Ugh. 
I called the doctor first thing this morning.  Talked to the nurse.  They have a fairly painless system set up.  If...If you don't have a corn allergy. 
I need to say that they've made progress.  It's just the frustration that I've already been through the learning process, I already know the next step...I already have the info they need but they won't take it from me until they realize that they need it.  I'm trying to be patient and acknowledge that they have a learning curve as well.  It just takes time. 
Anyways, if all was normal with me, I would have had an oncall doctor call in a prescription for me and that would have been that. 
But all is not normal. 
So, at 11:40 my doctor called me to figure out why things weren't going according to plan.  And I explained that the prescription needed to be called in to the compounding pharmacy.  And offered the phone number, again.  I don't think she took it that time either.  She did offer to find the inactive ingredients for me and call back, which she did in about 10-15 minutes...assuring me that they had a safe medication waiting at the pharmacy but I should double check with the pharmacist. 
So...I trotted down to the office, left a sample, and waited in line to pick up my rx.  They were friendly...and explained that I needed to wait a few more minutes to talk to a pharmacist.  I ran to relieve myself and waited some more. 
The pharmacist was on the phone with the manufacturer, and she approached me with the information that the prescribed medication was not safe for me (dumb microcrystalline cellulose in everything!) and asked if there was an alternate med I'd taken before. 
I explained, again, that in the past I've needed to have antibiotics compounded.  The only ones I've taken that were safe pre-filled were -cillins.  She looked pretty uncomfortable at that revelation, did not take my compounding pharmacist's phone number, and said that she will talk to the doctor but at this point in the day I probably won't get an antibiotic until at least monday which is an awfully long time to wait when you have a UTI!!! 
So what did I want to do? 
I weighed my options.  Corn reaction...or wait for something safe. 
I decided to keep flushing my kidneys with as much water as I can manage while waiting for them to accept my compounding pharmacy phone number. 
It's 2:15 now. 
I'm not feeling terribly hopeful. 
But maybe next time, when I call between 9 and 10, they will take the info and TRUST me; and just skip to the end step of making the necessary phone calls. 
How hard is it to call a compounding pharmacist and say "I need an antibiotic for a UTI with no corn derivatives in it.  What do you have in stock?"  It can't take much longer than spending the day playing phone tag.  :-( 
I'd rather be at the zoo.

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