Naked Ladies...

...Amaryllis Belladonna. These flowers don't bloom until all their green foliage has died back, which  I think is why they are called naked ladies.  They are toxic and can cause intestinal disturbances if ingested (who would eat them?) and contact dermatitis if touched. I always think of them as pink ladies and love the way they pop up out of nowhere in the middle of dry fields.

In search of shade when it was already warming up, we went to Howarth Park, but the large parking area was full and people were trolling around waiting for somebody to leave. That didn't seem to be happening, so we went to our default...Brush Creek where I found the naked ladies.  I had to go to Walgreens to sort out my prescriptions, but it was too hot to leave Spike in the car so we decided to go home.

The story of our journey through practically every pharmacy in the Bay Area is emblematic of what is happening to our entire health care system. The underlying problem is insurance companies which are effectively running small, individually owned pharmacies out of business. When the last such one closed a couple of years ago, our prescriptions were sent to Rite Aid. There is always a period of adjustment where we learn the rules of the individual pharmacy and they find out who we are and what we need. Rite Aid has now declared bankruptcy and closed all its stores in Sonoma county. 

We elected to have our doctors send our prescriptions to Walgreens, not because we like it, but because it is closest to our house. The switch has not gone smoothly and I decided that today was the day to try and get some answers. Having already gone to the store and gotten mixed messages, I decided to see what I could do on the phone. There may be people waiting in the call answering queue but at least you're not aware of them shifting from one foot to another as  you try to communicate private information through a plexiglass screen.

The story goes on in this vein for awhile but it's far too boring to go into further detail. I felt for the poor man ahead of me in the queue when I went to pick up my prescriptions. He was leaning on an empty shopping cart and when he finally got up to the window had to shout the fact that he had just gotten out of the hospital and that he hadn't been given enough cancer medication prescribed by the doctor there. Why did the poor man have to go stand in a queue at Walgreens when he has cancer and had just gotten out of the hospital? There has to be a better way.

I got the meds I needed. Who knows if they will be automatically refilled, whether they will give me the right amount and whether they will inform me that they are ready.

I'll leave those questions for another day...