New Year, Same Hold Music

If you're wondering whether CVS Caremark specialty pharmacy is equipped to handle fertility patients who switch clinics, the answer, friends, is "Not as such." The nurse at Dr. Small Guns was most consternated when I informed her that CVS didn't have my scrip on file, and I had been able to get refills only from prestanding orders from Dr. Big Guns. One advantage of a smaller office, however, is the nurse rolls her eyes loudly enough that you can hear it over the phone, says "I'll talk to them and call you back," and then she actually DOES IT (WHAAAAT?) and discovers that the reason is I had three different profiles at CVS Caremark. One for each clinic I have visited, I presume.

So. Today's task - call back CVS Caremark and arrange for the delivery of whatever else I'm missing, to arrive at my apartment on January 17. My period was three days late this cycle, creating the usual frisson of possibility followed by somewhat crushing defeat, together with more wretched than usual cramps, but the good news about that is it means my next one shouldn't be due until the 20th. Which is good, as I'm out of the country from the 9th to the 16th.

Scheduling, Succotash. Infertility treatment has turned me into even more of a calendar psycho than I ever thought possible.

CVS has jazzy, upbeat hold music, which I have come to know intimately over the past two years. But their customer service people mean well. In my call with them on the 31st, as I arranged to refill all my available prescriptions and get more needles and pens and syringes and gauze and sharps boxes, not admitting that I was requesting all the extra stuff so that I could pass it on to strangers on the internet who have no insurance in the event that I do not need to use them, she concluded by asking if I have any questions for the pharmacist.

"Yeah," I said. "Why me?"

She didn't have an answer.