I’m so sorry you’re in this predicament, Jim. Do you have any friends, family members or neighbors who can do your shopping for you? I don’t know where you are, but if I was there I would shop for you, as I’m sure many others here would as well.
Since your physician isn’t responding to your online communications, could you possibly telephone your doctor’s office? Perhaps you could speak with his nurse or physicians assistant and they could facilitate help with your prescriptions. Best of luck and blessings.
Hello Neesaki (and to several others here who replied to my posting) and thank you very much for your offers of help and kindness.
Since I posted my previous comment I have actually been able to make contact with someone in my primary care physician's same health care system. And it seems as if my prescription has already been sent electronically to my pharmacy dated for April 7th. But what troubled me was no one had bothered to inform me of that fact, as would have been done in an online system normally as well by a phone call from a nurse who works directly in my primary care doc's office. That is what prompted me to begin worrying my doc himself may have become a victim of coronavirus (as health care workers are the most vulnerable, along with police, firemen and paramedics, because they come into direct contact with infected persons as part of their jobs).
And evidently my other prescriptions, the ones mailed to me, were approved by my primary care doc (or someone in his stead) too. But, again,
I wasn't informed of that fact and had been receiving emails from my insurer telling me they were unable to reach my physician and requesting I do so. The online health care system whcih would normally respond did not do so in the typical manner. That may also be of some help to others reading this, to not give up and pursue issues with a telephone call if the online system of your healthcare provider fails you.
It's been more complicated receiving these mailed-to-my-home prescriptions then I imagined it would be when I began that delivery method a few years ago, since the insurer requires my approval by email before they may even be shipped, plus now some relatively new system (probably Medicare-related) in place called "prior authorization," whereby my primary care doc must also okay each and every prescription. When I first began receiving mailed-to-my-home prescriptions, all of my prescriptions were mailed to me. But there developed a lag time with the one pain medication I am prescribed, for some reason, after which my primary care doc declined to cooperate anymore and insisted I resume the old method of picking up that one prescription in person at the pharmacy. I had mostly begun the practice of mailed-to-my-home prescriptions so a friend who drives me to the pharmacy would not be burdened anymore. But even with having to pick up that one medication each month, at least I no longer have to go to the pharmacy multiple times anymore, with the rest of the meds mailed to me.
As for my grocery shopping, it is not a problem getting a ride (at least
not right now), only that I worry that my friend who would normally drive me (and who I typically compensate for his help by buying him dinners whenever we go out to eat together, as well giving him the gas points from my shopping orders and occasional Amazon or Burger King gift cards ) may have, himself, been exposed to the virus, since he has not been self-quarantined for 14 days yet. Each time he goes out he risks becoming infected, as will I then, too, once I go into a grocery store.
Even with social distancing, the various steps one must take when one goes into a retail establishment, beyond mere physical distance, are perhaps more cumbersome than one might imagine, having to bring a can of disinfectant and/or antibacterial wipes with one to spray and wipe the handles of each and every supermarket door, shopping cart, freezer doors, keypad at the self-checkout station (if you are even fortunate to have such in your nearest supermarket) and so forth. I also plan to wear gloves when I go into a supermarket or the pharmacy as well.
I also read a column about the 1918 so-called (and misnamed) "Spanish Flu" pandemic, the link to which was actually posted by a fellow Websleuther, which stated that the biggest problem resulting in death in 1918 was persons (including in the military) began getting sloppy about their habits, even though initially many were following suggested protocols of self-isolation and so forth, which led to infection and ultimate demise for so many. The key is vigilance, it would seem.
I’m so sorry you’re in this predicament, Jim. Do you have any friends, family members or neighbors who can do your shopping for you? I don’t know where you are, but if I was there I would shop for you, as I’m sure many others here would as well.
Since your physician isn’t responding to your online communications, could you possibly telephone your doctor’s office? Perhaps you could speak with his nurse or physicians assistant and they could facilitate help with your prescriptions. Best of luck and blessings.
But eventually, if this 'flattening of the curve" aspect will not cooperate in our mutual favor, even with vigilance there may not even be enough healthy physicians left to treat patients, enough healthy left to bury the dead, enough persons to keep supermarkets open anymore, and the same with online suppliers. In 1918, according to that column, one physician even worried publicly the pandemic could lead to the total disappearance of human beings from the earth. Now while that gloomy prophecy didn't pan out in 1918, there is nothing, even with all our sophistication and new technology since a century-plus ago, to suggest a pandemic couldn't still wipe out the human race. And I know I am not alone (even though I live by myself) in thinking this is the scariest time I remember in my entire 61 years of life, even worse than the attacks of 09/11/2011 at this point, which really only
directly affected three strategic points of the United States--the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, that airplane which crashed at the latter site having been diverted by very brave and heroic passengers' interaction with terrorists from reaching Washington, D.C, where. presumably, the target would have been the U.S. Capitol or the White House--and victims totaling about 30,000 (some 3,000 killed, some 27,000 injured, most of them firemen) plus a smaller amount of their loved ones elsewhere.
Those who reside in or nearer New York are already experiencing just how bad COVID-19 may become, with makeshift morgues set up outside Bellevue Hospital. But soon this very bad scenario could well sweep across our heartland too, at which point the United States could become the epicenter of the coronavirus to the entire world, just as Wuhan Province, China had been the pandemic's ground zero.
I suppose I am also not alone in at least suspecting coronavirus may hot have just innocently evolved from some carelessly-initiated interaction with natural phenomena (feces droppings from bats or birds at so-called "wet markets" in China), that COVID-19 could well be an intentional act of biological warfare, which either evolved out of control beyond its intended target(s) or else did
exactly what it was planned to do.
Somewhat ironically, I first joined Websleuths.com about two months ago, because I was concerned about the well-being of
just one missing (and now, very sadly, deceased) boy named Gannon Stauch. Now I am more engaged in the WS forum (among which is this thread about grocery shopping during the pandemic) which concerns many millions of persons, including
us all.
And no amount of praying will help us out of this either. It is going to take many healthy intelligent scientists (the likes of a Louis Pasteur, Alexander Fleming or Jonas Salk) working against a clock on therapeutics and, hopefully, eventually, vaccines too, to help the rest of us before
we all perish. I thank you all for your advice, and cross my fingers that some very smart people will come to our rescue while there is still time. In the meantime, all most of us may do is participate in buying some extra time. There have already been too many (hopefully, eventually "preventable") deaths and infections from coronavirus, which began with that very first human contraction of the virus. No use in playing the blame game (with a politician or a foreign nation, unless the virus
was created by bio warfare) about this either, as we are all, evidently, potential victims of this horrible killer virus.
j/k
