Medco Games
April 08, 2007
Medco has been jerking me around, yet again, over Protonix. During spring break, I went to see the primary care doctor to see if there was something different we should about my GERD, since I was almost out of Protonix and to let him know we were playing the Medco game.
He is fed up with, decided I needed to be scoped anyway since it had been a while, so he sent me to a gastric doctor (I think I've posted about this, sorry for the repeat).
So I saw the gastric doctor. She decided I also needed a gall bladder ultrasound since gall bladder stones can cause a backup of bile, looking like GERD. She also gave me a medication, Carafate which is supposed to help if it is bile reflux.
It doesn't seem to help.
She also prescribed Reglan which set off all sorts of red flags because it counteracts Symlin. I tried it for a few days, it doesn't seem to help.
Then the Endo said to back off on the Symlin -- so I went to 10 units. Amazingly enough it didn't seem to affect my blood sugar.
I have had to make another change to the Symlin, unrelated -- I've been having trouble with crashing in the evening during my new workouts, so I've changed my evening meal, so that I take no insulin and no Symlin. I can't decide if that is helping or now, and I'm still low at night. That means I still need to eat something before I got to bed which DOES affect the reflux.
Anyway, back to the Medco games. Gastric doctor prescribed Protonix, 2 x time which is the only thing that helps. Most of the time. I still get break through depending on how much I have to eat to fix the nightly low.
So Medco needs an authorization for Protonix, because it isn't Nexium. Then they need a second authorization for the amount of Protonix, because it's an extra amount.
So the gastric doctor had to fill out both authorizations -- and I think that is where everything got screwed up at the primary care physicians. The good news is that I'm authorized for the extra dosage until October and I'm authorized for the medication until April.
I had the sonogram on Friday and am supposed to get the results back tomorrow. I'm getting scoped tomorrow, early in the morning.
All this, because Medco has to play games on GERD medications.