Piecing Together the Little Blue Pills

A most important package arrived today. My prescription of Verapamil, for blood pressure.

Even though I get a 90-day supply of my prescriptions, I am constantly running out, mostly because my prescription mail-order program, ExpressScripts, is repeatedly telling me they won’t refill perfectly good refills.

“Thank you for your recent order. Your prescription order for (fill in the blank) cannot be filled for the following reason(s):

“The mail order minimum for this medication is 45 days, your physician wrote for less.”

My physician never writes for less. She always writes for the 90-day supply. But after filling it once, they refuse to honor the refills.

Whenever this happens, and it’s always about the verapamil, perhaps because I take it twice a day (along with two other blood pressure meds), I’m forced to figure out how I’m going to last until I can get the new prescription, physically mail it in, and then wait for it to be delivered.

Over the last few weeks, I have cut my prescription of the drug, only taking it once a day instead of twice. And over the last few days, I have been piecing together crumbs of the blue pill in order to get one dose out of it. Since the last refill contained several pills broken in two, I had something to work with. (Although the taste of the uncoated pill leaves a lot to be desired…) And, believe me, there have been some deleterious effects caused by cutting the dosage.

I’m obviously going to have to do something about this problem. It’s driving me crazy.