Solutions and Updates

Given the amount of stuff I dumped on my last entry, I figured I should provide the latest update.

Crisis #1 Follow Up

No change in the older daughter’s situation that I’m aware of, though it may take her a while. I talked to her about moving to the Midwest with us. Her initial reaction was “Tornadoes? HELL no!”

A couple of nights ago she grudgingly agreed to reconsider the knee-jerk reaction. Where she lives now, the fire risk is already extreme – literally every single year they face evacuation and being burned out, and she figures it’s just a matter of time until the place truly does go up in smoke.

She’s an avid gardener, and there’s no comparison between the garden you can force from the desert vs. the garden you can create in the Midwest. There are other considerations, too, but these two are significant.

Crisis #2 & 3 Follow Up

The grandson was discharged from the hospital night before last. Daughter had a couple of vouchers for a nearby hotel and they stayed 1) to make sure grandson didn’t have any setbacks (which thankfully didn’t happen) and 2) because he definitely wasn’t able to handle the drive 1.5 hours to here yet. He deals with carsickness at the best of times, and that on top of everything else could have created a setback. We wouldn’t risk it, even with Dramamine or equivalent.

Grandson will be moving in with us immediately and indefinitely, for a number of reasons. His mama will stay probably a few days, go back to where they were living, then make a permanent move here, too. She’s packing their stuff and putting everything other than clothes and computers into a storage room.

Until now, G was willing to help because these are our kids (and make no mistake – blood or not, these are HIS kids and grandkids.) He wasn’t enthused about it, but he was willing. Now, though, he realizes we all need to team up to help each other. This week reinforces even more the need to move to a bigger house in the Midwest, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Crisis #4 Follow Up

G is getting better. His vision is messed up, though it’s gradually improving. We know now he had a light stroke. We haven’t been able to get him on Medicare so far – long story I won’t go into here – and this year my work medical skyrocketed to about $1800 a month, for $7000 deductible per person. It wasn’t an option for us any longer. Because, you know, being homeless and not eating isn’t conducive to wellness, either.

Because of zero medical coverage, he refused to go to the hospital, to the ER, even to urgent care. Nobody could talk him into it.

(My own Medicare took me months to slog through, but I finally have it.)

Good News #1

Younger Daughter worked in the health care industry before her own health took a nosedive. She told me she was getting medical care through a program called My Doctor Now. Far as I could tell, it’s a nationwide program – hence the link. It’s $39 per month for the plan. Office visits or telehealth visits are $10 each. House calls are $50.

House calls are in fact still a thing.

Who knew???

The program also includes discounts on lab and blood tests, etc. – the latter of which can also be done as a house call. I don’t know how much those are. I haven’t dug that deep yet. Under some circumstances, though, I could see a home visit for blood tests becoming invaluable. There’s no age limit for the program, which is also also a good thing imho.

For the record, you have to schedule an initial appointment with one of their providers to sign up for the program. I’ll post more when I know more. You’ll likely see a Nurse Practitioner vs. an MD, which isn’t a downside far as I’m concerned. Everyone I know who sees a NP says they’ll never go back. Every single person I’ve talked to said the NP provided superior care.

And G agreed to do that so if nothing else, we can restart his prescriptions. (He still has some, just not all.)

Good News #2

The last time we went to refill G’s prescriptions for routine meds, CVS pharmacy demanded $500 for two bottles of 30-day generic prescriptions, which is outright theft. A few years ago, we bought a six-month supply of one of the same scrip at Costco for around $18-20, without insurance. Like everything else, I’m sure it’s gone up. I don’t believe for a second it’s gone up hundreds of dollars for a widely-used generic drug.

Then I discovered we can get all three of G’s scrips through Amazon for less than $15 a month, combined, delivered to our doorstep. All it takes is an Amazon Prime membership, which we have already. Heck, the price difference for just one of the prescriptions, for one month, more than covers two years of Prime membership. We could potentially do cheaper yet via WalMart, if we can’t figure out how to enroll through Amazon. I don’t think they deliver prescription meds, though I’ll check into it once we get things figured out.

I’m sharing all these resources because the current medical industry is such a god-awful mess. If this helps anyone, I’m glad.