Indiana Jones and the Pharmacy of Doom

     Yeah, I suppose I've been soft-pedaling the emotional aspect of all this. There's a definite "Why me?" component to finding out you have  a disease like diabetes. Or as I put it to a neighbor. "So not drinking red wine for the rest of my life wasn't enough; now I can't have a piece of fucking toast?!?"
     That isn't entirely true. Your blood sugar craters — 58! — you can have something sweet, and twice I've turned to my drug of choice: two pieces of black Kookaburra licorice. But in general, I'm facing a considerably constrained palate, looking down the road. Suddenly a turkey club on wheat toast is as forbidden as a shot of Jack Daniels.
     But my wife stepped up, preparing delicious, low-carb, low sugar meals. And honestly, the struggle to feel well and get my blood in order made the menu a distant consideration. The hardest part is logistics. Finding an endocrinologist — the one I was sent to isn't taking new patients. Or, my God, filling prescriptions. After I got my doctor to put me on insulin, it took six, count 'em, six visits to Walgreens to actually get the stuff.

     The first trip to the drug store, the insulin was supposed to be ready, but actually wasn't. "Come back after 2," I was told. But when I returned, "the shipment didn't show up." It seems the Northbrook Walgreens doesn't stock Lantus insulin, but gets it from another store. The third time they gave me the Lantus. I went home and discovered they hadn't given me needles. The needles are kinda important. So I returned, a fourth time, and found that my doctor hadn't prescribed the needles. I was told I could just buy them — $80 — or contact the doctor and get a prescription. Perhaps it was cheap of me, but I decided to call the doctor and come back. Why pay if I had them coming? I'd been waiting for days; what's another hour?
     The fifth time Walgreens had the needles, but needed an hour to fill the prescription. I asked why they couldn't just walk the needles over to me — I could see the box; they were right there on the shelf — the way they had when they suggested I buy them? The clerk checked with the pharmacist, who said no, they were too busy. 
    I was kinda busy myself, trying to live my life. Or had been, until this ailment showed up and took it over. Now I was going to spend my days standing in line at the Walgreens pharmacy. "Why this is hell," Christopher Marlowe wrote. "Nor am I out of it."
     At least the Walgreens isn't far from my house. Still, a lot of hustling back and forth. One time driving the few blocks, Hozier's "Too Sweet" came on the radio. I cranked it up, and that song segued into "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Now WXRT was providing a soundtrack to my struggles. I took comfort in, "But if you try sometimes, you get what you need."
    Which indeed was the case. "Hell" is overdramatic. It's merely annoying. And if this is a challenge for a moderately bright, relatively energetic, college educated professional journalist skilled at extracting information and pressing institutions, what must it be like for people who are less resourceful? Who don't have insurance — 7.2 percent of Illinoisans have no medical insurance.  There are yawning cracks in the process that are easy to fall into. Several times I found myself imagining: what if Elon Musk had set himself to trying to get everyone the health care they deserve instead of trying to get somebody to Mars? Idiot.

     Meanwhile, I was online, trying to figure out how to give myself injections.
     "This is a very dangerous medication," chirped That Nursing Prof, with a kind of laugh. "Very important you get this double checked by another nurse before you inject."
     Not an option for me, alas. My daily medical care was going to be very much a DIY, amateur effort, aided by Dr. Google.
     And I don't want to leave you with the impression that I blame Walgreens. It's clear they're understaffed and overwhelmed, and I found, when pressed, the pharmacists and clerks could be kind, and go beyond the call of duty. Getting my Crestor, a statin that allows grapefruit (I figure, claw back what regular life can be regained) I had a conversation with the pharmacist, Anish, that bordered on philosophy, as we mused that grapefruit, like life, delivers its sweet deliciousness mingled with bitterness.

     "That's why I'm so attached to grapefruit," I said. "I'm pretty bitter myself." 

     I'm trying not to be. Yes, there is often the Indiana Jones, escape-from-the-giant-rolling-stone-ball-and-come-face-to-face-with-the-tribesman-and-their-blowguns aspect. When I tried to refill the Lantus pen prescription, Wednesday insurance sent me a text message that it was too soon, based on the minimum doses and not what I was actually taking. Then, after calls to the doctor, Walgreens wanted four days to fill it. I appealed in person, and a pharmacist found the pens — at a different location, but just down the road. But when I went there to claim my pens, I was told they were ready in theory, but not in reality, and had to wait a half hour. I took a seat, and a workman walked over and began drilling into sheet metal a few feet away.
     The beauty of all this is, there really isn't a choice. You can ignore it, and develop one of the hideous side effects — blindness, neuropathy, amputation, death. Not a lot of toast when you're dead, discounting the possibility of hell. Plus, as I keep telling myself, "Nine-year-olds manage to cope with this..."
     I promise I won't write about diabetes forever. It may seem that way. But for the moment, it's the only show in town. If it seems all-encompassing and oppressive, well, welcome to my world. Generally I go about my business, forget about this for 10 or 20 minutes at a time. Work of course is a comfort ("Work," as Noel Coward once remarked, later in life, "is more fun than fun.")
     There have even been moments of happiness. Early on, I had hurried to Sunset Foods to stock up on stuff I could eat. I rode my trusty Schwinn Cruiser, and was coming out of Sunset with its black metal basket full of spinach and chicken and pork chops, and some sashimi for lunch. A gorgeous sunny day: 68 degrees. And I could feel my brain reboot, like I had gotten my mojo back, and for the first time in days was myself again. I went home, laid lunch out nicely, tried to be festive about it, breaking out my new blue whale chopsticks holder. Yes, this is a struggle, but as Hemingway said, the world is a fine place, and worth the fighting for.