INTERNET BUREAUCRACY
I seem to have a fallen into a pattern of one day finding the digital world I live in to be amazing and the next day finding myself all tangled up by it. The same thing happened today. I started the day trying to see if I could send my X-rays from my dentist to Dr, Kakar, my dentist in Greater Kailash, New Delhi. I wanted to see if he thought he could implant a tooth on my left side to fill that side out as the back teeth on the right side rot away with my Asheville dentist saying that while they might last a while he could do nothing to save them. I brought an xray back from India once when I got an MRI there for $100 after landing on the back of my head on the ice the day I flew out of Asheville, very sore indeed. That xray of my brain with an empty places (completely natural the doctor had said) was 2 feet by 3 feet. But when I called the dentist’s office she said to simply give me Dr. Kakar’s email address and she would send the xray by email. It was there in a second while Dr. Kakar in Delhi was still asleep. Easy as pie.
But then I tried to get a 90 day supply of my medicines for my upcoming trip through SilverScript, Medicare Part D. I could easily get my regular 90 day supply on January 24th, but I was leaving on the 10th. Could they give the 90 day supply two weeks early? CVS pharmacy tried and couldn’t. I would have to call into SilverScript and get a vacation override. I came home and did that, an apparently complicated business, with the nice young woman in the Philippines apologizing to me, “Mr. William” again and again for it taking so long. I finally got the override approved, but when I went down to the pharmacy to pick up the prescribed medicines I was only been given a 30 day supply. So I called SilverScript again and got a very nice young man in the Philippines who again apologized for taking so long because he had to get approval from the international desk, and then he said finally that he would have to call my pharmacy, which he did at 5:15 p.m. (I don’t know what time in the Philippines) and the Sunday pharmacy was closed. He apologized profusely “Mr. William” and said that I would have to call in the morning. So when I called this morning I got another young man in the Philippines, but not so nice this time. He first wanted to know where I would be in a month when the 30 day supply ran out. Varanasi, I said. He spent a while looking up Varanasi, India, and I guess discovered that there wasn’t a CVS there. So he said that I couldn’t fill the prescription there. He said that anyway I was only allowed one override a year and I had had it. There was no way that I could refill my presecription for Lisinipril and Metformin, I would have to pay on my own for them here in Asheville. But that time I was exhausted and ready to give up. But there is more to the story which I will tell tomorrow.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 