Friday, April 12, 2019

Medicate and wait

I don’t want to turn this into a blog about my health, but here’s the latest.

I’m in New Mexico now and will be for a while as I help Lou build his home. I went to the clinic in Silver City to see what a different medical professional had to say. I gave him the story so far, he did some peeking and poking and agreed with me it was an infection. Not a goiter. Not GERD. He said the amoxicillin I was prescribed before is a rather weak antibiotic, and prescribed ten days of clindamycin (which I should take with yogurt because it sometimes causes diarrhea) and five days of the steroid prednisone.

So now I do that and see what happens.

When I picked up the meds, the clerk had a concerned look on her face. “Do you have coverage for this.”

“No, just Medicare parts A and B.”

She paused, looking at the paperwork stapled to the envelope. “Do you want me to see if there’s a coupon?”

“Um, sure.”

Before I could ask how much it was she went to fiddle with a different computer, and I’m wondering if the clindamycin is one of those outrageously expensive drugs. Did I see something like $575 on the upside down paperwork? Well, the day before was my Social Security payday so I’m “rich” at the moment, and I won’t be burning much gas while I’m at Lou’s place, so I guess I could swing it.

She returned, looking happier, and I asked, “How much?”

“It was $19.00 before, but I got it down to $15.00.”

New Mexico is one of the poorest states, so I guess everyone is cost conscious. Hey, four bucks’ll get me a Lotaburger at Blake’s. Or five yogurts at Walmart to go with the clindamycin.

4 comments:

  1. Take the yogurt or even better a probiotic (more bugs) in between antibiotic doses. This can really help with the runs. If you take all at the same time, the good bacteria just gets killed with the bad.

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