Are you jealous of your friends who are "Snow Birds" ? Those lucky bastards who get to go south in the winter and north in the summer living the best of all worlds. It does sound wonderful doesn't it ! And IT IS wonderful ! I am blessed' have discovered this marvelous life style, thanks to The Man and his house in wayyyyyyyyyy Northern Michigan. He hates cold winters and I melt in the hot summers of South Florida. Its a match made in Heaven and we both are completely happy with the move back and forth in May and October. No problem there, other than living in motels for 3 nights but even that has settled into a routine of sorts.
Where we DO run into problems is once we have made the move from one location to the other we have to TOTALLY readjust ALL our health care because now we have moved from one medical care provider to another.
So what 's the BIG deal ??? There are doctors everywhere and they all should basically be the same. It's not like we have moved to the jungles of Africa where our medical needs will be attended to by a doctor wearing a lion skin and sporting a bone in his nose. And yet it REALLY does seem that way.
First of all, The Man is a veteran. ALL his medical needs are taken care of through the United States Veterans hospital. If he breaks a bone he goes to the VA. If he has the flu he goes to the VA, if he needs or wants ANYTHING medical he goes to the VA.
Because it is the year 2022 I foolishly was/am under the assumption that the World Wide Web of internet connections can INSTANTLY connect you and me to anyone anywhere to find out anything ! If Siri and Alexa can answer all my questions AND flush my toilet I expect the internet to be connected to everyone who has a computer. ESPECIALLY government agencies. (I am pretty sure there is a computer reading my blogs to see if I am planning an insurrection.). So when The Man and I go to the VA hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida wouldn't you assume that they are connected to the VA in Iron Mountain, Michigan ????? It's not like we are asking Mac Donalds to give their secret sauce recipe to Burger King. The Veterans Hospital is a government agency no matter what city the building is located in. I get that the CIA doesn't want the FBI to know what they're doing and vice versa, God Forbid, but I am talking about the VETERANS HOSPITAL.
So . . . From October to May The Man, who's primary residence is in Michigan, travels to Florida to spend his winter in the warm sunshine. He is 75 years old, has worked all his life so he is entitled to some R&R in his senior years. He does, unfortunately, have a shit load of medical issues so he NEEDS good medical care to monitor his health. He is also taking a shit load of medications to keep him alive so he NEEDS to be sure the doctors check his health regularly AND provide him with prescriptions for the medicine that he needs. Yet EVERY SINGLE TIME we go to a VA doctor, no matter where we are, they never have the updated list of his medications in their computer ! I am VERY meticulous, (thanks to my OCD) I carry with me several copies of his most recent list of medications. The first thing the doctor or nurse always asks for is a list of medications. I hand them the typed list and the fun begins. For what ever reason the VA can NOT get this straight. (In their pitiful defense they are constantly changing his meds in order to save money. More often than not these changes result in major set backs in The Man's health and it takes us weeks to get him back on the original medication so he can get back to "normal") But even with that they inevitably have two or three medications on their list that The Man has NOT been on for months or even years. It is a twenty minute process just getting the medication list straight with them.
Next we get to the Medical History part of the exam. If The Man is in the government computer under his social security number don't you think that ALL his records would be accessible from the Veteran's web site. Nah . . . that is just too much to hope for. West Palm Beach can't access Iron Mountain. Iron Mountain can not access West Palm Beach. Add to all that the hospitals in Green Bay,Wisconsin and Milwaukee where we have to go to see any sort of specialist. Yes, we have to drive 2-4 hours to see a cardiologist or a pulmonologist. These Veteran Hospital doctors can not access either West Palm Beach or Iron Mountain or each other. I have a folder of all his medical files that we ourselves find and print out. There are days when it takes us hours to find the notes of his last visit to a VA doctor. But they are there if we search long enough. The US Government does NOT make it easy. If things continue as they have these past several years I will need to buy a truck to transport The Man's files with me when we visit any doctors.
The most recent issue we had with the VA happened two weeks ago. Actually it started about 2 months ago when some idiot decided it was too expensive to provide a particular inhaler for people with COPD. The Man had been using this inhaler, "S", for years and it did a great job of helping him breathe. Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, that inhaler was no longer available to veterans. The VA has switched over to something else because it was cheaper. OK we will give it a try. Problem being that the old inhaler "S" shot a LIQUID mist into The Man's lungs. Inhaler "X" shot a POWDERED mist. Because The Man's issue is that he CAN'T BREATHE the powder from inhaler"X" did not get into his lungs. Rather it got only as far as the back of his throat and that did NOTHING for his lungs. We tried to explain this to the VA doctors but that was like trying to teach a chicken to sing. It was ALL about the MONEY.
FINALLY we got a doctor in the Milwaukee VA who listened and realized that what we were telling him was in fact quite true so he ordered a new inhaler, "Q" for The Man. That arrived, The Man used it and it worked great. Until The Man forgot to reorder it and ended up with no inhaler for about a week. When he first realized he was running out of "Q" he called the VA in Milwaukee where the original order had come from to order a refill. He was told they had no record of him being on "Q". So we called the doctor who prescribed it and of course had to leave a message. After spending a couple of days chasing after the doctor we were told the prescription was being filled and would be sent within 12 hours. Forty eight hours later and no inhaler we called the pharmacy who told us it was being shipped overnight express that day. Thirty six hours later still no medicine. Called the pharmacy again and they said it was sitting there waiting to be picked up in MILWAUKEE which is 4 hours away. We then called the Iron Mountain VA to see if they would fill the prescription and we would drive an hour to pick it up but they had NO record of the medicine ever being prescribed for The Man.
This went on and on for days until we finally called the new doctor at the Gladstone VA Clinic that just opened this year. We had been to see Dr. Mike for a check up when we arrived here this season and really liked the guy. He is young, he is smart and he is not one thousand percent on board with Government policies regarding health care for the veterans. He thinks outside the box. He listened to our tale of woe and wrote a prescription to be sent to us ASAP. He also gave us a written prescription in case the other didn't arrive so we could go to a local pharmacy. We would have to pay out of pocket but at least we would get the medicine. That wasn't necessary because the new inhaler arrived within eighteen hours and The Man was finally able to breathe.
For all my friends out there who think the government should be in charge of everything please take note of how well they can screw up one little prescription for one veteran. God Help Us if we allow the powers that be to be in charge of everyones health care, housing, food and education.
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