Not The Year I Planned

—-LONG RANT—-

Why does it seem like all of your misfortunes happen at once? Sometimes I feel like everything and everyone around me coordinated an attack on my mental well-being.

This past year was trying to say the least. For every milestone I reached, there were 10 mishaps that immediately followed. I would work tirelessly to achieve every goal I set, just to be blindsided by some unfortunate situation.

The beginning of this year started on a sour note. I was already running out of my insulin at the end of last year and was waiting for my doctor to authorize my next refill. I made sure to have my request for it in a timely manner. The request takes a business day to approve, in most cases, and a holiday was in a few days.

Assuming this request was going to be approved before the holiday, I figured I would have my insulin before I run out of my current prescription. No problem, right? Well not only was I wrong, but what happened next almost became tragic.

It started when the pharmacy sent me a text alert reading: Your rx is DELAYED, there was an issue with your insurance. No further action needed. Not unusual, but I am a little confused on what that issue is. Maybe the doctor’s office still has to authorize the re-fill, I think.

By this time the holiday has arrived, and it is the weekend, so any authorization is not happening until Monday, at the earliest. My insulin is dangerously low but, I have learned to manage my carb intake, since my diagnosis three years ago.

Once the doctor’s office is open again, I think it will be straightened out. I was hoping anyway. When I finally get a notification that my refill request is approved, I had run out of insulin and desperately needed more. I feel a sense of relief.

However, this is short lived. I receive the same vague automated message from the pharmacy. What is the issue with my insurance? Something about a change, but I could not recall me making any changes to my coverage.

I reach out to the insurance company, but that becomes a phone call where I push a lot of buttons just to wait a long time to speak to a human customer service associate. I was usually working during those hours, so I didn’t have time to dedicate to waiting, while listening to elevator music for minutes at a time, usually at least 15.

After I failed to reach the insurance company, I call the pharmacy to see what the issue is on my refill, they tell me there isn’t one, so I go to pick up the prescription that night, and that’s when I’m told “your insurance stopped covering that insulin.”

The day they stopped the coverage on this prescription was on a holiday, and I was not notified of the change. By this point it has been a little over three weeks since I’ve had any insulin and while I managed my carb intake, I could feel the difference. I was stressed and worried that this would not end well for me. I could feel the fatigue and every other symptom slowly antagonizing me. Why did no one tell me they stopped covering it?

To make matters worse, I found this out during the weekend. Which means the authorization I needed from my doctor I couldn’t get until Monday morning. I make that my main priority.

Once I get in contact with my doctor, everything gets squared away and I was able to get my prescription that same day. Doctor had no idea I wasn’t able to get my insulin and neither the pharmacy or insurance company thought enough to call me or my doctor. This could have ended worse, but I survived this ordeal.

Following this debacle, it took all of the spring and most of the summer for my health to fully stabilize. I had three separate A1C readings an 8.0, 7.7 and a 7.6. The Diabetic specialist I began seeing prescribed me for a supplemental insulin to take with the insulin I already take. I wasn’t too fond of the idea in the beginning, but it has helped my health tremendously.

While I was finally able to get my Diabetes back in check, it robbed me of most of my summer activity, so I had to slowly work myself back into my physical regimen. During this I was able to record my best running workouts, and it might not be a big deal to most people, but it was to me. I had worked to achieve this goal.

Health-wise everything was starting to get back to normal. I was back to working out regularly and my A1C had gotten back down to 5.8. This is a range I usually keep myself in. As my health improves drastically my family goes through another trying time.

We were planning to celebrate my sister for her birthday, when we get news of my grandmother suffering a massive stroke, with significant bleeding on her brain. I wasn’t sure how to process this news.

As long as I’ve been alive, my granny was always battling something she wasn’t supposed to survive. She bounced back every single time. The doctors were telling us it would be different this time, there was no more they could do for her medically, so she went into Hospice.

Since I work with the elderly, I am familiar with the purpose of Hospice, end of life care. The writing was on the wall to me. I began going through old voicemails that she left me, and just could not stop crying, I already missed her calling me 5 times a day, now I’m being told that will never happen again.

Eventually, I make peace with her no longer suffering. I wasn’t ready for her to go, but she would no longer be in pain, and I was at peace with that, but this stubborn little woman was bound and determined to prove the doctors wrong. I’m not sure if she thought she was going to recover, but most of the nurses were giving us a timeline of a couple of days. She wasn’t speaking or really conscious anymore, so it seemed reasonable.

Once they get her out to the beautiful facility, I thought to myself, “this will only be a couple of days, I want to spend as much time with her as possible.” She did recognize me while she was in the hospital visiting, and that was the last day I heard her voice. It’s a bittersweet feeling today. So I hoped to see her before she went.

Thinking I would only get a couple of days, this woman refused to go without a fight. Those couple of days turned into a couple of weeks, and near the end we get a call that she won’t survive the night, so I rush out to join my mother, my granny’s husband, and a cousin of mine, and we spend the night.

The next morning, I wake up shocked to see that she was still with us, we did however get news of one of her nieces passing away that morning. Something that none of us were expecting. She had been in contact with my mother to check on my granny. We try to process this as family starts to come say their goodbyes to my granny.

The night my granny did eventually pass, it was kind of unexpected. Again, I was at peace, but I wasn’t ready for her to go. The 5 or more phone calls a day, mostly wanting to hear my voice or sing Nat King Cole songs to me, those are things that will never happen again. Still those are memories I will never forget.

My family begins to bond as we lay to rest the last remaining elder of the family. We try to comfort one another while we try to move forward without our matriarch. Things take a while for my mentally, but it does push me to finally pursue my lifelong dream of attending film school.

This brings us to today, nearly one month from some inconsiderate driver slamming into my parked car, and not leaving a note. It was a frustrating moment. The second time a driver hit it while it was parked. I had been working a lot and had plans to get some minor work on it done, now those plans had to be cancelled. Thanks, terrible driver!

As far as film school is concerned, I actually got accepted. However, they needed a copy of my high school transcript, which was misplaced by the high school I graduated from. So the admissions office of the film school has been working with me to locate that.

As difficult as this year has been, I am grateful to still be going into a new year. I did not anticipate writing my granny’s obituary, coming into 2022 or my health being in serious jeopardy for a majority of the year, but I did reach a lot of personal goals.

There were a lot of losses, and heartache, but I also accomplished a lot of things that I am ecstatic about. Here’s to 2023 being a year of moving forward, growing and accomplishing everything I set out to do.

——-END RANT——-