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The one thing that I'm truly exhausted with regarding my health lately are the details of having one chronic illness on top of a slew of hormonal issues. The bills, the prescriptions, the actual supplies...I'm tired of dealing with them all. I'm running out of room in both my actual living space and in my life.
Throughout the month, I spend quite a large amount of time and money organizing and ordering supplies. Sometimes it's insulin prescriptions, vitamins and supplements, and sometimes it's all the hormones that keep changing on my endless list of pills to take. No matter what it is, it gets thrown into the mix of everything else going on with me, which sometimes means that things slip by or end up in disarray.
For instance, all the supplements I take for my hormone challenges take up an entire drawer in my dresser. A drawer that I could be using for clothes or towels or whatever. They all come from different places...some from superstores, some from supplement discount membership companies, some from my doctor's office. And all that chaos means that I can't keep track of what I take, how often I need to reorder, or how much it all costs.
My actual hormone prescriptions take a bit of a challenge as well. Previously, I was on an ever changing pill collection. Now, I've been switched to a combination of pills and creams. All of which are still changing...meaning that I can't order more than a months worth at a time. And meaning that I can't set up for an automatic shipment.
My favorite part of prescriptions are automatic shipments. With the pump, my supplies shipped immediately every 3 months to insure I had enough on hand as soon as I might be getting low. I didn't have to think about it, I just knew they'd show up in their box soon enough. Now that I'm not using the pump, I just have drawers and boxes of pump supplies (for some reason, I got 3 months behind...I think they were shipping them a little too close together) for no reason. And I'm without an automatic shipment. My insulin and syringes and strips don't show up on the front step, they take time and patience to go online, order, ship, or pick up at the store.
On top of all that is the endless supply of medical bills. Every where I look in my apartment and at my mom's house, there are bills lying around in proof that I ordered some prescription. There are reimbursement forms waiting to be filled out (for my hormones). When I look at all those tallies of the pills I've taken and insulin I've used, it makes me want to scream. I'm sick of the reminders that these diseases cost thousands of dollars every year. I'm tired of bargain hunting for the lowest supplements and cutting out "unnecessary" pills just to keep a budget in line.
Most of all, I'm just tired of having to handle all these separate issues. I want someone to take over....to come into my home and organize all the bills and pills. I want someone to sign me up for automatic shipments where I can stop worrying about checking to make sure I'm not about to run out of something. I'd like an advocate on my side looking at how much things cost, where we can store them, and when to refill the pill box.
Maybe this summer I'll find the time to sort through all the "side effects" of having chronic conditions. Maybe I'll find the energy to figure out how to get everything to ship in sync and automatically. Maybe everything will straighten out so I can stop switching prescriptions and supplements every month...so I can finally get back to my "normal" life without 60 pills a day on top of the insulin and strips and syringes.
