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Express Scripts is a soul sucking parasite

Express Scripts is a soul sucking parasite that is no doubt responsible for causing worsening illness and probably even deaths.

Want my vote, politicians? Stop pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Are they telling you they’re working on making improvements? You know they’re lying, right?

I can prove it because I wrote this 11 years ago:

This is my first post since 2017. That post about Accredo is still in my top two posts ever written and it continues to bring new readers every month. Read the comments.

Only one month ago, we spent days fighting for a prior authorization. The nurse submitted repeatedly. Express Scripts coded one wrong, then continued to deny the rest. Then I was told one went through and we had three months until the nightmare again.

Wrong. One month later, Accredo says Express Scripts won’t approve a refill being shipped despite the PA being dated through July. It’s “expired.” So I get transferred to Express Scripts. They say a PA was never approved. I ask, tell me how we got it shipped last month (April). Well, the last time their system says it shipped is February.

I’m told to just have my doctor’s office appeal it. I take a deep breath and try not to put my fist into anything I’ll have to fix. Because these people on the phone don’t know what that means. “Just appeal!” WE. DID. ALL. THAT. WE HAVE DONE IT A BILLION TIMES. You will reject that one too. I’ve been playing this game with Sabril (a seizure medication for difficult to treat epilepsy for 11 years). Don’t tell me to JUST anything. There is no JUST. There is only ORDEAL and STRESS and MENTAL HEALTH DAMAGE.

Oh also, every time they deny a PA, it’s “the doctor didn’t send all the correct information.” For that reason, I’m posting the screenshots below of what I went through with the nurse last month via MyChart. I think she’d take issue with that accusation.

“It’s not us. It’s your insurance,” the Accredo rep tells me. He advises me to call Express Scripts.

“Guess who owns you,” I hiss. “Guess who won’t let me have a choice.”

Are you handicapped? No? THEN MOVE.

handicapped-parking-1478608I got really insanely angry this morning. I attended the sneak peak at my son’s elementary school in Cobb County and was unable to park in any handicap spot. Every single spot was taken. Only one had a legal tag displayed. Every single striped wheelchair loading zone was taken, too. I’ve learned, thanks to a couple Facebook groups, that this is a common problem in many of our Cobb schools and little has been done to address it.

I haven’t had a tag for Connor that long, so while I obviously know this stuff occurs, I was not prepared to see EVERY SINGLE SPOT taken illegally (aside from the one). I complained inside and an announcement was made, but unfortunately the police officer that is there sometimes wasn’t present this morning. Someone who illegally parks in a handicap spot in the first place isn’t going to move because of an announcement, anyway. And when I left, there was a fresh crop of new illegally-parked cars pulling out of those spots as the sneak peak ended.

My son has a handicap placard because his brain has a bunch of benign tumors that have delayed his development, cause seizures, and make him a wobbly walker. And yet, I still only use the spots when I absolutely must. I don’t care that the lot was full this morning and that you didn’t want to park farther away.

I WILL TRADE YOU MY SON’S BRAIN TUMORS AND HIS PARKING SPOT FOR YOUR NORMAL PHYSICAL ABILITIES. 

Feel free to keep your asshole gene though.

Next time I will contact the police myself.

You are the reason my four-year-old son fell four times on the way to the car.

My kid fell because of people like you.

Someone else had to carry a 70-pound child to the other side of the car to get to their wheelchair because of people like you.

Someone’s child almost darted in front of car because they don’t understand danger because of people like you.

So get it together, not just Cobb County, but everyone that thinks this is okay.

 

This is Epilepsy

From a fellow TSC mom.

Dac's Mommy

Today we were having a good day. Dac was busy playing

with her toys, she had a snack and was her usual smiley self.

Then this happened.

IMG_1096.JPG

you see Dac has Epilepsy but it is more than a word. This is my child this disease is affecting and many more children and adults. If you are hesitant to donate for research, advocate for treatments, support ,educate or to even pass a law

look into her eyes and explain why.

See the blood trickling from her mouth? She bit her tongue. Not a pretty sight

you want to see. Imagine if this was your child.

This is not the picture of my daughter i really want to share. I prefer this one

deborah

With Epilepsy you do not get to choose.

You have to watch your child in helpless fashion endure it and

to pray they come through it.

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2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 33,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 12 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

The scores are in…

Just received the results from Boston on his Mullen scores from the TSC study (nope, still haven’t heard about his MRI). Definitely a lot happier with the scores this time than last time.

Age: 17 months

Mullen Scale

Descriptive Category

page1image18872 page1image19032

Age Equivalent

Gross Motor

Very Low

9 months

Visual Reception

Below Average

page1image26912 14 months

Fine Motor

Very Low

14 months

Receptive Language

Very Low

page1image33904 10 months

Expressive Language

Very Low

9 months

Obviously I wish there were no delays, but I’m pretty excited to see 14 months in two categories. That’s not too shabby considering all he’s been through. And I can’t say the low ones are a big surprise. He just started to crawl and he doesn’t have any words yet. But he is continually progressing and I believe he will get there, especially in motor skills. He’s pulling himself up on furniture constantly, and while he can’t quite get to standing, he is trying.

I’ve sent the results off to his Early Intervention team to get their thoughts…

Now if I could just get the MRI results.

There’s even room for a beer fridge on the porch!

So that neighbor I told you about? The one the put his house up for sale? They got a contingent offer of some sort. So I’m annoyed they got one first, but at least they are now out of the running. Plus, according to my realtor, they aren’t set to close until the end of July. At least if they accepted a lowball offer, and I have no idea if they did, it won’t affect our comps. I’ll be curious to see what they get though. We attempted a walk through with our realtor, but when we got there, there was a note that said not to enter without showing instructions. Uncertain what that meant, and if there was an alarm, we didn’t go in as we were unable to get the realtor on the phone (the house is empty). I can tell you there is a lot of rotten wood on the porch.

In the meantime, we continue to have plenty of showings, but no luck yet. I’m starting to hate the Autumn Lake neighborhood near us which shares our floor plan, and has a ton of homes on the market. I know one of our weekend viewers bought one over there because it had a master on main. She didn’t even know she wanted that until she saw it. It was otherwise very similar. Stupid, stupid Autumn Lake.

We’ve had three people come back for repeat showings. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. One of those was also this weekend. We were in her top 3…number 3 of course. She ended up choosing a house on a lake even though at the original showing, she was so afraid of snakes coming up, that she wouldn’t even go in the back. Well, alrighty then.

We went house hunting yesterday for the first time and of course I fell in love with a house. It has everything I want, though the price requires some negotiation. So far, I have been the chill one about having the house on the market, while Chris has been very antsy and agitated. Now I’m irritated. Let’s move this along already. I WANT that house. It’s more space, a screened in porch, and all the upgrades I could want.

In happier news, Connor is crushing it–life, I mean. He just got himself into a sitting position on his own for the first time a little bit ago. He’s babbling mamamamama, too. His newfound mobility has proven to be quite the life adjustment for us. I know everyone goes through this, but we’ve had 15 months to develop lazy habits about where we could set him down. Now his new hobby is hurtling himself off furniture. First it was the couch, which startled him, but he was okay. Then he made it off our bed, landed in a sitting position, and thought it was hilarious. But then it was the changing table, and while he wasn’t hurt, I think he scared the crap out of himself. I know I certainly stopped breathing when I heard the thunk. All I did was turn away to grab a diaper! So now I have to keep reminding myself that he cannot be left on anything at all even for a second.

I’m also excited that after years of trying to have kids, my friends Giovana and Damien are down in Colombia to pick up their son David. More on that when they return in 5-8 weeks…

Gio and Damien's mustache-themed baby shower.
Gio and Damien’s mustache-themed baby shower.

I prefer the Spam that you eat…

Spam in general is really annoying, but since WordPress has a pretty good filter in place, I don’t have problems with spam comments ending up on my posts. Every once in a while I do skim through the spam folder just to see if anything legit has been stopped. That has yet to happen, but I’m always amused by what I see. I really don’t know much about how the spammers do their thing, but I always wonder how if you have this technological know how, why can’t you find a way to put together a proper sentence? The most common tactic I see is for them to string together some confusing, vague compliment complete with links to some shady page selling “designer” purses. It’s good for an ego boost if you ignore the fact that it’s automatically generated nonsense.

Some examples:

963640 885954This is an outstanding write-up and I completely comprehend where your coming from within the third section. Perfect read, I�ll regularly follow the other reads. 388621

I’m writing to make the public know what a fantastic experience my girl found checking your webblog. The particular realized several issues, most notably what it is as an example to possess an awesome teaching mindset to have others without problems know precisely selected impossible issues. You really did more than her desires. I appreciate you for producing such effective, trusted, educational and as well as fun guidance on this area to Janet.

What i don’t realize is in fact how you are no longer actually a lot more smartly-favored than you may be right now. You’re very intelligent.

You understand thus considerably in terms
of this topic, produced me for my part consider it from so many various angles.

Its like men and women don’t seem to be interested until it is one thing to do with Girl gaga! Your own stuffs great. Always deal with it up!

You made some decent points there. I looked online for the problem and found most people will go together with together with your web site.

 

But today I came across a new tactic (or at least, new to me). Insulting me. This one cracked me up, probably because, for a moment, I thought it might be a real comment :

The next time I read a weblog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as a lot as this one. I mean, I know it was my option to read, but I in fact thought youd have something intriguing to say. All I hear is really a bunch of whining about some thing which you could fix should you werent too busy searching for attention.

Well, guess who I won’t be buying any Christian Louboutins from…

 

Blog of the Year 2012

Thank you, Sylvia, for nominating me for a Blog of the Year Award. What a great chance to recognize other bloggers. Sylvia has nine, yes, NINE kids and she blogs about life in the chilly north. Her daughter Bethany is a major focus of the blog because at the age of two she was diagnosed with brain cancer, which she beat, but it left her with a lot of health issues including persistent seizures that kept her confined to the couch for many years, until she she just recently became seizure free.

I highly recommend checking out her blog, as well as my nominees for blogs I really enjoyed in 2012 (which I actually would nominate Sylvia, but do you nominate someone who nominate you? That seems weird. What does blog etiquette call for? 🙂 )

1. You Don’t Know Jack. This is a blog about another child with TSC. For him, TSC meant brain damage and autism, but there’s something to be said for finding such joy in the little things like straws (a marvelous Christmas tree decoration, I must say), and never knowing when one of his toys will apear at the bottom of your coffee cup.

2. Toemail. I once feared the feet of others. Now I follow a blog based  on feet. I love travel and I love that this blog is creating a worldwide community by posting pictures from around the world.

3. My Beijing Survival Diary. I really enjoy reading this woman’s account of living in Beijing combined with travel/living advice.

4. No Points for Style. When I came across this blog, I found myself captivated reading old posts. The world of her son and pediatric mental illness is an overwhelming one, but this blogger is a great source of information.

5. Heartbeat at Our Feet. Another TSC mom blogging about balancing family, TSC, and a massive seizure dog named Denali.

6.  Tiffani Goff at Home. Yep, another blog with TSC as a component. What can I say? I have a vested interest. But it’s another I enjoy following.

7. The Adoptionistas. Two women that adopted two babies from Africa. They read ALL the parenting books. I mean ALL of them. So I just get my parenting tips from them 🙂 .

Here are the rules for this award: 1 Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award

2 Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.

3 Please include a link back to this page Blog of the Year Award and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)

4 Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them

5 You can now also join our Facebook group – click ‘like’ on this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience

6 As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…