This is so familiar to me from all the problems I had when my dad was dying of COPD. Wrangling his medication was a full-time job.

I once had a pharmacist tell me it wasn’t an emergency just because we hadn’t arranged for critical medication in time. (Through no fault of our own, but the details are complicated.)

When I told him that it was objectively an emergency because my dad could die without his medication, I could all but hear him roll his eyes over the phone.

The thing is, I was not exaggerating. Missing inhaler doses really could trigger life-threatening respiratory crises.

To be clear, most of the interactions I had with healthcare providers and pharmacists were very positive, but the system itself was often deeply problematic.

Seriously, you need 3 days to get a medication in stock that people take because they might die without it? And transferring to a different pharmacy will actually make the process take longer?

Sigh …