Needlework

 

    "NEIL I," CVS informed me Saturday, via email, my middle initial making me seem like some kind of dynastic monarch, "your prescription(s) are ready for pickup at your pharmacy."
      Prescription, singular. For insulin pen needle tips. Taking between one and five injections a day, I go through them quickly. One doesn't want to run out of needles.   So when I get down to a couple dozen, I want a fresh box ready. I've been waiting for CVS to automatically fills my pen needle prescription.

    With prescriptions popping up regularly at both Walgreens and CVS, it's hard to keep everything straight, and CVS doesn't tell you what any given prescription will cost until it is filled — in this case, 100 needles for $41.60.

    I sighed. I'd been hoping they'd be free — sometimes they are, sometimes not, according to some logic. I have not yet mastered (my hunch is, different types of prescriptions from different doctors).

   So instead I went on Amazon and bought two 100 count boxes of a nearly identical needles — 32 G, 4 mm pen tips— for $11.99 apiece, almost a quarter of the cost at CVS. I could have gotten them for $9.99 apiece, but didn't like the looks of the box quite as much. It was pink. The boxes I got were green, like the Nano prescription needle boxes. Green seems a mark of quality for me. 

     The only difference I can tell is the $41 boxes have foil covers on the little plastic cone holding each individual needle tip — those seem sturdier, and feel better while being stripped off than the little paper covers. 

     That's nuts, right? Paying more for the little strip you pull off. But when you do something continually, such minor considerations take on greater weight. I've shrugged, standing in line at CVS or Walgreens, and paid the $40 plus, thinking a) I'm here, might as well get more; b) those foil covers do strip off far more satisfyingly and c) the box is green.

     But that seems wasteful. When I was in Portugal, I worried I hadn't brought enough needle tips — we were eating a lot of carbs — so thought to buy another box. That involved walking into a pharmacy, asking, and putting down 7.39 Euros — about $8.45, no prescription needed (actually, you never need a prescription to buy insulin needles at a drug store in Illinois either).

    I do worry, by buying two boxes on Amazon, I might be in violation of the Illinois Hypodermic Needles and Syringes Act, which clearly states that a person may possess 100 such needles. Though it doesn't say you can't possess more, so perhaps it's a gray area. If it is indeed illegal, I would point out that sometimes these pieces on EGD veer into satire, fantasy and fiction, and one can't be certain this isn't some wildly exaggerated medical dream sequence. No need to kick in my door. I'll say I sold the other hundred to my wife — they're her needles now. I just own 100.

     Looking into law and diabetes in general, Illinois and I see eye-to-eye regarding injection. When I first came down with diabetes 1, if I'd be out to eat in a restaurant, I'd excuse myself and go administer insulin in the restroom. A process that had a cool, Keith Richards vibe, to me, which shows you what a straight arrow I've become.

     Nowadays, anyone I know well enough to eat lunch with can be trusted to gaze off in the middle distance while I hike my shirt and jab myself in the stomach. This practice is endorsed by the 2025 Public Self-Care of Diabetes Act, which notes, "The General Assembly finds that forcing diabetics to administer their personal insulin injections out of public view is unnecessarily restrictive" going on to state, "A person with diabetes, or parent or legal guardian of a person with diabetes, may self-administer insulin or administer insulin for his or her child in any location, public or private, where the person, or the person's parent or legal guardian, is authorized to be, irrespective of whether the injection site is uncovered during or incidental to the administration of insulin."

     "In any location..." Hmm. "Irrespective of whether the injection site is uncovered." That makes a person think. Being a wisenheimer, I'm tempted to read this to mean I can drop my pants in the middle of Orchestra Hall in order to administer insulin into my backside and be fully supported by the law. That would certainly inject some excitement into the second movement of some lugubrious piece by Mahler.