Bloodwork

Had an appointment yesterday with the pharmacist attached to my doctor’s family medical practice, to discuss the results of my latest bloodwork. It was mostly good news. I no longer need to self-test five to seven times daily. Once or twice a day will suffice to keep track of my currently acceptable blood-sugar levels.

That will be much easier on the fingertips of my left hand, and should please executives at the insurance company that provides coverage for our prescription medications. They’ve already balked once at the frequency of filling my prescription for glucose test strips. At just under $90 for 100 of the little suckers, not including dispensing fee, I can’t say I blame them. Use five a day, that’s nearly $100 every three weeks. One or two a day stretches the supply to nearly two months. The difference is about $1,000 annually, and I've yet to mention the price of lancets.

On the other hand, who wouldn’t pay another thousand bucks to feel good all year? I’m slowing a bit, but there was a time the ticker on my annual booze meter must have swept past the one-grand mark without a backward glance. Maybe it would help if pharmacies dispensed prescription drugs to the back-beat of a solid blues ensemble, accompanied by go-go girls and an ambiance of questionable possibilities. Then again, pharmacies don’t have cover charges. Then again, again, “dispensing fee” might just be another phrase for “cover charge.” One way and another, every service has its cost.

Life in a mature, integrated economy is like laundry. My non-essential expenditures are someone else’s mortgage payments and grocery money, while essential expenditures make sure the economy stays in rotation, like it or not, until everyone gets a little dizzy from a couple go-rounds in the spin-cycle. At least the technology keeps getting better. Blood glucose monitors are endlessly improving marvels right up there with mouthwash and cell phones. Actually, as my monitor already lights up, reads and stores data for computer download, tells time, sounds alarms and indicates operational problems, how many more buttons would be required for it to phone readings directly to my medical records, or take collect calls when the wife is stranded penniless in Wally World? It has to be worth something that the 38 page manual is NOT an unreadable translation from Chinese, let alone that the monitor should help keep me going long enough to buy more test strips.

If you blanch at the thought of insurance company executives giggling over new-found savings, take heart from the knowledge that my daily dosage of Ramipril is going up. High though improving blood pressure readings, not to mention the protein in my urine, should wipe smiles from boardroom faces. Sorry guys. Must look after those kidneys. Man’s gotta pee.