4-15: Purchases -- Day One

1) Copay for Dr Z. in the vain attempt to pay less for allergy serum.

At this time Dr. Z. confirmed for me the avarice of certain doctors by debunking the myth that if you change allergist midway through the allergy shot sequence you absolutely and necessarily have to have new skin tests (uncomfortable and extremely expensive) and start the entire series over again (a time-consuming, painful, and… wait for it… expensive process itself). In fact, even the extract manufacturers have come closer to similar formulas so even if your new doctor doesn’t use the same manufacturer they should be able to create a near replica of your old serum and just drop down by a couple of doses. It turns out that by forcing the retests doctors are getting their dime off of you as a patient. This would be fine if it were literally a dime, but is not great when in actuality the tests run in the thousands of dollars and one can never really be sure how much will be covered by one’s (increasingly crappy) insurance company. Allergists have entire conference topics on how to standardize their industry and deal with transferring patients in this increasingly mobile society. My allergist and Dr Z. use the same standards and methods. Both Drs work in the name of science and medicine rather than bank accounts and boats, therefore I do not have to be retested and I’ll be able to continue my shot series relatively undisturbed. Hooray!
On a less exciting note, Dr Z. confirms that the probability of the serum working continues to decrease the longer I’m not seeing results.
Bottom line: allergies might not be the underlying problem, they just might intensify whatever’s wrong and make me feel worse 6 months a year.

2) 1 birthday card.

Turns out that J.’s mom’s birthday is tomorrow. I’m going to send her a card. Yes, had I figured out this was her birthday earlier I’d have gotten it in the mail earlier but I didn’t.