Late January Blues

I've started my new regiment for maintaining a healthier lifestyle, albeit mostly unsuccessful, for the better part of a week. What I didn't realize would be my most difficult challenge would be getting my insurance to cover the cost of more test strips. As a Type 1 Diabetic, one of the main challenges in controlling your blood sugar is to test often. Testing five times a day is good if you're not doing anything exercise wise or if you have any unexpected problems during the day. Five times a day gets me my three main meals, bedtime and one random time in between meals. My usual random time is between lunch and dinner, around 3:00 PM in the afternoon when I'm sitting at my desk. Again, for any diabetic looking to get their blood sugar under control this is a good number to start off with as far as daily testing goes. So five times a day times 30 days in a month equals 150 test strips needed in any one month. While at my Endocrinologist last week, I mentioned that I would probably be better able to control my blood sugar if I could test more often. After all, I do want to lower my A1C reading, the three month average blood sugar reading, to a more normal range from where it is right now. She informed me that she would write me a prescription for 200 strips a month, which she electronically filled out to my pharmacist while I sat in the examining room. A couple of days later I went to pick up my new prescription and I got that all to familiar look from the cashier when you know something's not right when the pull up your order on their screen. She said she'd be right back. She returned to tell me that the insurance company takes between 3-5 days to process the new prescription and that I should call back instead of just showing up. So on day five, I called back to see if the insurance company had accepted my new prescription and the person at the pharmacy said I needed to get in touch with my doctor to see what the holdup was. I proceeded to get in touch with my doctor's office to tell them they needed to find out why the insurance company was not accepting the new prescription. To make an already long story somewhat shorter, the nice lady at my doctor's office came back to me with this: Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina, through my wife's state employees health insurance plan, will not accept an increase in my test strips until we meet a certain dollar amount in deductible cost. It was at this point that she didn't know in what way did I have to meet my deductible, thus forcing me at some point to now contact my health insurance to ask/beg them why they don't want me to be healthier. I'm not complaining, I'm really not. It's just hard not completely understanding why the people who take so much money from you, your insurance company, can't fully comprehend how expensive Type 1 Diabetes is, but that's a post for another day. I need to get on the phone and talk with these people.

Closing commentary, my two sons both had an exciting week. My oldest ran into a mailbox on his bike last Monday and needed 13 stitches to close the very deep gash in his cheek and my youngest had his quarterly ear infection return. Hooray for the services of daycare!!