Me

I work for a hospital, and I think all of my readers know that. With that being the case, our employee insurance requires us to use the hospital’s mail in pharmacy to fill all prescriptions. That pharmacy is run by corporate, and they suck royal donkey balls.

I am a diabetic and have been taking Mounjaro for the past year. In order to get the drug, you need to get approval. To get that approval, you need to prove that you have tried other remedies for at least a year, and that those remedies failed. I met that requirement, as I have been a diabetic for over 15 years, have taken those other medications, and they no longer work. So it was approved, but it took weeks.

This pharmacy sends prescriptions 90 days at a time. When it is time to refill that prescription, it’s always a hassle. You would think that a pharmacy owned by a hospital would be decent, but it isn’t. I suspect that this is because they are trying to control costs at the expense of their employees. Let me explain:

Now, every time I go to refill, there is always an issue. They claim that they are out of Mounjaro, and try to convince me to switch to being an insulin dependent diabetic. I know how fragile diabetics are once they go on insulin, so I always have to fight them on it. The first time, they blamed it on a supply shortage caused by people using it as a weight loss drug. So this time, I ordered the refill a month ago.

It wasn’t filled because they had an issue with my credit card over the $25 copay. I corrected that, and now they are saying that the medication is out of stock. I just took my last dose, and my next one is due in six days. Since it must be shipped to me, it has to ship by Friday. Any bets on whether or not they make it? Assholes.

It’s complete bullshit. My last hospital required us to use the in hospital lab for all of our lab work, and I suspected that they were doing that so the bosses could see your medical history.

If you have a problem with modern healthcare, it shouldn’t be with the actual workers. The administrative bean counters are the problem.

We called the builder to complain that the sink in the upstairs bathroom had no hot water, only cold. The bathtub that is right next to the sink has hot water, though. So after a couple of weeks, a plumber shows up. He runs the water in the sink for a couple of minutes, then declares that the sink is piped incorrectly. He says that he will have to cut into the drywall to get at the pipes and will need the boss’ permission to do it. He says he will be back.

An hour later, he returned with a second plumber. They said that they would be cutting into the drywall to repipe the sink. I have a complete set of photos of what the house looks like without drywall in place. I show them where the pipes are, and they cut a 2′ square hole in the kitchen ceiling. In the wrong spot. They are mystified when they wind up under the upstairs air conditioning plenum.

I again point out to them that they are in the wrong spot. This time, they cut where I tell them the pipes are. There is the hot water pipe, and they tell me that the pipe was mislabeled during construction. They then cut a third hole so they can tap off of the bathtub’s hot water.

The sink upstairs still doesn’t have hot water at that point. They keep trying to figure it out. At this point, they have been at it for over 4 hours. There are three giant holes in my kitchen ceiling. There is insulation raining down all over the kitchen. My house is in a shambles. We can’t use the kitchen.

I asked them if they checked to see if the faucet is bad. They looked at me like I was a moron, so I continued: “What if there was some construction debris in the pipe, and it made its way to the faucet’s hot water valve, clogging the valve.” They asked how I would figure that out. I replied: turn off the cold water valve under the sink. If the faucet still works, it’s piped wrong. If the sink doesn’t work, it’s the faucet.

It was the faucet.

They plumbers apologized profusely and said that their boss would call me to figure out how to repair my ceiling. This is what it looks like.

I understand that mistakes happen, so I call the builder. He tells me that it’s a warranty issue, says he will put in a work order, and according to the warranty documents that I agreed to at closing, they have up to 15 business days to repair it. They will, he tells me, get to it “when they get to it.”

I tell him that he needs to do a better job of reading the warranty. A warranty item is described as a “defect in materials or workmanship that occurred during construction of the home.” This didn’t happen during construction. It happened because his subcontractors were incompetent morons. This means that it is a claim for their insurance, and they have exactly one week to get it fixed. If it isn’t, I am going to hire someone to fix it myself, then I will sue them to collect my costs.

I can’t use my kitchen. There is drywall dust everywhere. We are finding blown in insulation all over the house, because when the plumbers tried to clean the insulation that had fallen from the ceiling, the shop vac they used just blew it everywhere. That cardboard patch that is duct taped to the ceiling in the picture below? It fell off 15 minutes after they left.

Now every time we open a door or the air conditioner comes on, insulation falls from the holes. Bugs crawl in at night. So I got some pieces of cardboard and attached them to the ceiling using staples from my nail gun. These are essentially holes that open my house to the outside.

I am more than a bit pissed off about this. If it isn’t fixed by Monday, I will start calling my own drywall guys and an attorney. This is complete and utter bullshit. I’m not nearly as mad about the plumbers fucking up as I am about the attitude of the warranty supervisor. You handle things like this by saying “I am so sorry this happened. Let me tell you what we are going to do to fix this. It will be a priority item for us, and I will see how quickly I can get someone out to help you. In the meantime, one of us will be over right away to secure your home from the elements.”

What you don’t say is “I don’t control the drywall company’s schedule. I will put in a work order and they will get to it when they get to it.”

In the meantime, posting may or may not be sporadic as I deal with this and still have to go to work to pay the mortgage on my now trashed house.

My wife and I have been together for a decade. She decided to take us to dinner as a celebration. We went to a six course meal, which I had never done before. The meal was prix fixe, and consisted of six courses, each paired with a wine selection by a professional sommelier. Each course was small, which was a good thing, since there were six of them.

We arrived at the appointed time and were served a welcome cocktail while we waited for the other diners. The cocktail was simple syrup, mint leaves, and champagne. It was intended to be a light, refreshing palate cleanser.

We sat down at the appointed time and were served our first course. It was the appetizer course. Scallop Carpaccio paired with an Italian Pinot Grigio. The scallops were sliced thinner than a sheet of paper. It was fairly good. This is the plate:

The soup course was second, and it was a Smoked Tomato Soup that had been cooked for six hours. It was paired with a white wine from Napa Valley that was pretty good.

The third course was the salad course. It was made from butter poached lobster, hearts of palm, pineapples, and cilantro with a vanilla dressing. The wine pairing was a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

The fourth course was the fish course. It was a roasted branzino with zucchini, peppers, lemon, and a pesto. It was hands down the tastiest course of the night. If it had not been such a fancy restaurant, I would have been tempted to lick the plate. This course was paired with a Chardonnay from California.

The fifth course was the beef course. A grilled filet mignon with truffled potato puree, asparagus, and bordelaise sauce. It was delicious, but I have to admit that I was getting pretty full at this point. This course was paired with a Cabernet from Napa Valley.

The last (dessert) course was a chocolate sphere that they poured hot caramel over, revealing a peanut butter ganache, chocolate mousse, and a caramel gelato. It was good, but I was so full at this point, I only ate about a third of the dessert. It was paired with a Salted Caramel Espresso Martini. The martini was so good that I had two of them.

The meal was superb, but I have to admit that I ate so much that I didn’t eat at all the following day. I had two of the martinis, and that turned out to be a mistake. First, there was so much alcohol served with this meal, that I was pretty drunk after the three hour dinner experience. Second, I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, and my heart was racing at about 120 beats per minute. I am guessing the espresso had something to do with it.

We had a great night, and this meal was an appropriate celebration of ten years together.

It took 5 weeks to get my rental home repaired from the damage done by the previous tenants. The total repair bill came to over $9,000, and I still need to replace the flooring in the entire house because their dog ruined it in spots by peeing on it.

Anyhow, we listed it 28 days ago, and our new tenants signed the lease to move in soon. That’s one project off my plate.

Now I have to work on selling our old house. It’s always something, and I am always busy.

Posting is delayed this morning because I am in the middle of doing my least favorite chore of the year- closing the books on 2023, and preparing my taxes.

Feel free to curse the IRS during this most difficult time.

Got to work, got my room assignment. took report, and all three of my patients seemed easy. After an hour of just sitting there, watching patients who were not really any trouble, I started thinking that I was going to have an easy shift for a change.

I was wrong.

I discharged a patient and wheeled her to the front door. When I returned to my little slice of the ED, there was an EMS crew waiting there for me with a patient. They told me he was normally on oxygen at home, and was coming in because it was taking more effort than usual to breathe. They hadn’t bothered to try for an IV, because they didn’t think it was needed. On 6 liters, his SpO2 was 88%. It got worse from there. So I called a respiratory alert. The respiratory therapist was busy, so never came. The doctor decided that the man was septic and ordered antibiotics. I gave them and went next door to the next patient.

I heard yelling and went back to see what the problem was. The patient was having an anaphylactic reaction to the antibiotics. Yep, turns out that he had an allergy that he didn’t know about. I had to do an emergency override for Epinephrine, steroids, and Benadryl. That was when the patient next door decided to desaturate. Then I had another EMS truck come in with a cardiac emergency. In the middle of that, the charge nurse came in and told me that I was getting a fourth patient.

All while the joint commission was there.

Fourteen straight hours of that. So that’s why I didn’t want to post yesterday.