![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The annoyance is for reasons not directly medical: at yesterday's follow-up they did bloodwork, as well as giving him his fluids and all the pills we hadn't managed to get into him in the previous couple of days, since he has gone from "oh, a treat" to "I'm not going near that, it has medicine in it"). He perked right up after getting his appetite stimulant; not being willing to swallow that one leads to an unfortunate feedback loop. Based on the bloodwork, the vet recommended adding another medication, warning up both that it was expensive and that most pharmacies don't carry it.
The new medication is Darbepoetin, to deal with a low red blood cell count. That's apparently a consequence either of the extra fluids we're giving him, or of the underlying kidney disease; in humans it's used for chronic kidney disease and for side effects of chemotherapy.
A few phone calls confirmed that it's expensive and that most pharmacies don't have it and many won't (or can't, per the Rite Aid pharmacy tech), but I decided that there were enough cat doses in one order that it was worth asking the Costco in Kirkland to order it for us. The price-per-vial is slightly lower there than at the nearby Bartell's, but the main difference is that Bartell's won't sell me a single vial. This makes some sense, in that for a human each vial is a single dose; in a cat it's several, depending on the exact amount prescribed. Which means that yes, he's becoming an expensive cat, but the Darbepoetin won't make him ruinously so, especially if we can go from weekly to every two or three weeks as he recovers. The Costco doesn't stock it either, and said they would order it when my vet called it in; the paper prescription wouldn't do even if I was willing to head right over and hand it to them.
The vet's office told me yesterday afternoon that I'd call it in, and that I should expect to hear from the pharmacy when it was ready. Not having heard anything by lunchtime today, I called the pharmacy. They'd never heard of Julian. So I called the vet's office. The receptionist asked me to hold on, and then told me that she just had talked to Dr. Todd, who was about to call it in, as soon as she "finished making a couple of notes on the prescription," and promised that she'd call me as soon as she'd done that. I emphasized the urgency of this even though Julian won't need the medication today: it would have been a lot easier for me to pick it up today than for one of us to do it tomorrow, or for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cattitude to do it while I'm away.
I had hung up before I realized how implausible the explanation was—"a couple more notes" on a prescription that she wrote yesterday morning? Yes, the receptionist saved herself the risk of being yelled at for someone dropping the ball (and now I wonder whether it was her or the doctor), but at significant cost to her/the practice's credibility.
I got off the phone with the vet's office 40 minutes ago as I type. I am going to drink this tea and then call back to check. (My hunch is that a call now might mean medicine available this weekend; a call tomorrow probably means Monday the earliest.)
ETA: I have talked, in order, to Cattitude, who got a phone message from the vet's office, and then to a competent-seeming tech at the vet's, twice. It's not clear whether the original confusion was at the Costco pharmacy (which seems plausible, but the vet is obviously better off if I blame Costco rather than her staff), but it seems to have been sorted out. The medication has now been ordered, and is expected Monday afternoon; it has Cattitude's name on it rather than mine, since he's going to be picking it up while I'm away. The tech said that if Costco doesn't call him Monday afternoon, he should call them to check on whether the medicine has arrived.
The new medication is Darbepoetin, to deal with a low red blood cell count. That's apparently a consequence either of the extra fluids we're giving him, or of the underlying kidney disease; in humans it's used for chronic kidney disease and for side effects of chemotherapy.
A few phone calls confirmed that it's expensive and that most pharmacies don't have it and many won't (or can't, per the Rite Aid pharmacy tech), but I decided that there were enough cat doses in one order that it was worth asking the Costco in Kirkland to order it for us. The price-per-vial is slightly lower there than at the nearby Bartell's, but the main difference is that Bartell's won't sell me a single vial. This makes some sense, in that for a human each vial is a single dose; in a cat it's several, depending on the exact amount prescribed. Which means that yes, he's becoming an expensive cat, but the Darbepoetin won't make him ruinously so, especially if we can go from weekly to every two or three weeks as he recovers. The Costco doesn't stock it either, and said they would order it when my vet called it in; the paper prescription wouldn't do even if I was willing to head right over and hand it to them.
The vet's office told me yesterday afternoon that I'd call it in, and that I should expect to hear from the pharmacy when it was ready. Not having heard anything by lunchtime today, I called the pharmacy. They'd never heard of Julian. So I called the vet's office. The receptionist asked me to hold on, and then told me that she just had talked to Dr. Todd, who was about to call it in, as soon as she "finished making a couple of notes on the prescription," and promised that she'd call me as soon as she'd done that. I emphasized the urgency of this even though Julian won't need the medication today: it would have been a lot easier for me to pick it up today than for one of us to do it tomorrow, or for
cattitude to do it while I'm away. I had hung up before I realized how implausible the explanation was—"a couple more notes" on a prescription that she wrote yesterday morning? Yes, the receptionist saved herself the risk of being yelled at for someone dropping the ball (and now I wonder whether it was her or the doctor), but at significant cost to her/the practice's credibility.
I got off the phone with the vet's office 40 minutes ago as I type. I am going to drink this tea and then call back to check. (My hunch is that a call now might mean medicine available this weekend; a call tomorrow probably means Monday the earliest.)
ETA: I have talked, in order, to Cattitude, who got a phone message from the vet's office, and then to a competent-seeming tech at the vet's, twice. It's not clear whether the original confusion was at the Costco pharmacy (which seems plausible, but the vet is obviously better off if I blame Costco rather than her staff), but it seems to have been sorted out. The medication has now been ordered, and is expected Monday afternoon; it has Cattitude's name on it rather than mine, since he's going to be picking it up while I'm away. The tech said that if Costco doesn't call him Monday afternoon, he should call them to check on whether the medicine has arrived.