Wally-World....

So yesterday morning I realized that The Toots was running out of one of her seizure meds. In fact, she would not have enough for the next morning's dose. Normally I don't cut it that close on getting the prescription filled, for obvious reasons but in this case, we are away, in Biddeford, for a week. It just sort of got away from me.

Well, I figured, no biggie. There is a Walmart here in Biddeford so I could just transfer the script up here from Rockland and have it filled by the afternoon. Oh, dare to dream you daydream believer.

I called it in and was promptly informed that they were out of stock of that particular med. Well, great.

Not one to be easily deterred, I called the Walmart in Scarborough. The one we had literally just driven by about twenty minutes ago. The one it would take us another half hour to get back to after we drove another fifteen minutes, in the opposite direction, to pick up The Toots from Sheila in Biddeford. In evening traffic. In August. Yeah.

Long story short, the Scarborough Walmart had the meds. Hurrah! Crisis averted! So we picked up The Toots and turned right back around to drive back to where we had been forty-five minutes earlier. Evening traffic. August. Hot. Tired. And oh yeah, did I mention we had spent the afternoon in Portland at UNE for Tessie's discharge from the neuromotor clinic? A full two hour meeting complete with DVD show of Tessie doing different therapies. A very good, but very intense meeting. And long. Did I mention it was two full hours of sitting around a conference table? On a beautiful day?

Okay, okay, enough. I know.

Back to my rambling point. We got to the Walmart in Scarborough and decided that Tessie would stay with me while I went to the pharmacy to get her meds and the hubby would shop for what we needed food-wise. A good plan. Divide and Conquer. In and out. Double time people.

The hubby took off with the cart and I stood in line with Tessie in her wheelchair and waited. And waited and waited and waited. I counted the minutes. Literally. I got in line at precisely 5:19 pm EST and was finally waited on at 5:41. I also counted that there were SIX people working behind (as in trying to look busy so they don't have to make eye contact and thus actually be forced to help someone)the pharmacy desk yet had only one person checking people out. That kind of thing really pisses me off. I bit my tongue. Hard.

I told the lady The Toot's name and was then told it would be $1100.00. I am not joking. That is the price of just one of her monthly meds. We have Anthem as our primary insurance but they were only covering part of the charge which knocked it down a little but here is where things rapidly went to hell.

The Toots has MaineCare as a secondary insurance which should of covered the entire cost. Surprise, surprise, it was denied.

I was then sent to speak with the Pharmacist where we went over and over that it was a covered medication and yes, she did have a prior authorization form for it from the State saying that they would pay for it. I repeatedly told them to call the Rockland Walmart to straighten it out.

It was then that I was given to the pharmacist because, get this, the "pharmacist" that The Toots and I had just spent thirty minutes with was an intern. Well, isn't that typical.

So I started my diatribe from the beginning with the new idiot, I'm sorry, pharmacist and we finally discovered after many attempts at me trying to understand his foreign accent, that it was being denied because they had filled the wrong type of this medication.

Let me make this very clear to you so you can fully appreciate the absurdity that is the MaineCare System and thus your tax dollars hard at work.

Even though it was the same EXACT medication, and the same EXACT strength to be taken the same EXACT times of day in the same EXACT amounts, because this one, the one they had filled was not dissolvable, it needed it's very own prior authorization form because the one we already had, was for the dissolvable tablets. But wait, it gets better. Those were the ones I had asked the pharmacist to fill when I called it in because I already knew all this and HE had screwed it up by filling the other kind. And then he had the nerve to try to blame me.

Guess how that went over?

Yup, Lee Osgood suddenly arrived in full force complete with Aunt Sharon glare. He very huffily and oh so put out-ly asked who had I spoken with when I had (supposedly) asked for that specific medication? Why I am ever so glad you asked me that Mr. Accent Man because... it was YOU.

It was at this point that he became ever so much more helpful and asked me to give him five minutes to fill the prescription that I had originally asked for when I called.

No problem you big stupid dufus.

By this time Tessie was also pissed. She was screeching, loudly, and banging her hand down on the arm of her wheelchair as I wheeled her throughout the store looking for the hubby to try to let him know what was taking so long. By this point, over forty-five minutes had been spent trying to sort this out. It was also around this time that I noticed a familiar stench emanating from The Toots.

And the hits just keep on coming.

Okay, no sign of the hubby, The Toots had clearly shit herself, and was pissed, everyone in the damn store was staring at us as we went by and then I heard Tessie's name paged out over the loudspeakers. "Would Tess Reidy please report to the pharmacy desk?"

Are you friggin' kidding me here?!

So I gave up the search for the missing hubby and headed back over, in a cloud of stink, to the pharmacy. More problems. They did not have enough of the medication to fill the prescription. Okay then Captain Obvious, how about you just give me what you got so I can get the heck outta this hell hole! Okay? Okay!

After an HOUR I get the prescription in hand. Hallelujah!

We resumed the circling pattern of the store in search of the hubby, the smell I was pushing in front of me had reached epic proportions and both Tessie and I were seething. I was muttering like a crazy woman things like, "Where is daddy? You would think he could hear us or smell us or something" I was ranting and raving and then I spotted him. And then I decided I didn't care about who thought what and I yelled across SuperWalmart. Loudly. CHARLIE!!!!!

He turned (along with many others) and looked at us and it was then I noticed that he didn't look so good. Kind of an at wits end, blank eye look. Twitchy and pissed. And we both greeted each other with basically the same reaction;

"Where the hell have you been?"

The hubby then proceeded to tell me that he had tried calling my cell and paging me out over the loudspeakers (none of which I heard) and when he clearly did not believe I could not have heard my name called throughout the store, I shot back with "Well, did you hear Tessie's name paged out?" NO? Check and Mate.

He then went on and on about how he had been in and out of the store looking for us and was beginning to think I had had "some sort of spell" in the store (those were his exact words) and had pictured in his head me, fainted dead away, in the middle of the aisles with The Toots sitting forlornly abandoned in her wheelchair in dire need of help. Uhm, okay? Because I am so prone to fainting?

The next scenario was that he thought Tessie must have had a seizure and we had been whisked away in an ambulance unbeknownst to him. He was literally running in and out of the store listening for sirens. He thought the security folks had him under surveillance because he insisted he probably looked quite deranged. I am inclined to agree after watching him recount his horrible predictions as to what could have become of The Toots and I in a SuperWalmart.

And then he came out with a winner. "I thought you had been abducted!" WHAT????? He really had lost it. I mean, let's face it. Who the hell would want us?!

By this point we were both laughing but in that close to hysterical way you get when you really want to scream at the other person.

We finally got out of Walmart and headed for the cottage in Biddeford. Charlie was still recovering and I was snickering at the image of him under surveillance like a madman who needs close watching all because he couldn't find his wife and disabled child and was anxiously asking every employee he stumbled across, "Have you seen a woman pushing a little girl in a wheelchair?" I mean, can't you just picture the looks on these people's faces? Bahahahaa.

Then, out of nowhere, a small car careened into our lane right in front of us with no warning.

"C@CKSu$#KER! M*therf^cker! Moron!!", yells out the hubby while slamming on the brakes.


I looked over at him like, uh, hello, perhaps you are overreacting just a tad and then I promptly burst out laughing.

Thankfully, so did he. Just another satisfied customer. Thank you Wally-World...