Sunday, November 03, 2013

Briefly Checking In

As I watched the sun rise over the Rocky Mountains this morning, it dawned on me that I'd not updated the blog in over a week. Due to the way I scheduled myself to play several feiseanna, I'm in a very intense period of playing all over the place. Fortunately, next Saturday will be my last feis until December and, I can assure you, I'm excited to get back to having free weekends for reading and writing.

Several readers may remember, from two years ago, that I was placed on bed rest for pneumonia. It was arguably the most trying week of my life: I never took days off of work and I'm not much good at laying in bed. Last Sunday, I had a bit of a scare when I developed a cough eerily reminiscent of the cough I had two years ago and began to have trouble speaking without a dry cough erupting.

Fortunately, I managed to see my doctor who confirmed that I had a bit of a respiratory infection. Noting that post-nasal drip may be contributing to this, she wrote me a prescription for Nasonex (I've tried Flonase before and it gave me awful nosebleeds). So I walked to the pharmacy and had them fill the prescription.

For some reason, my insurance doesn't cover Nasonex. Thus, for a little plastic device holding one-month's supply of this nasal spray, I had to fork out $153.00. $153.00. I have good insurance, I think, and I'm appalled at this cost. I was never warned, prior to handing over my credit card, that it had not been covered nor was I offered a less expensive alternative.

I am in the graced position of being able to afford this medicine. Nevertheless, I am forced to ponder what it would mean for a family of slender means to face this burden. I am taking the Nasonex as part of a preventative effort to stave off future lung infections. If I don't take it, and get an infection, it could lead to a longer-term illness. If I couldn't afford the prevention, I risk having to pay a great deal more for the cure.

I simply mention this. I need to do more research to learn about why insurance didn't cover this particular drug and how common this might be in our medical system. 

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