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Eating, self-image and coping mechanisms (split from Privilege and Guilt)

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Post by Prajnaparamita Fri Oct 16, 2015 1:49 pm

(Hey mods, I wonder if you might want to split the thread here, because I wanted to address some questions of eating, weight and self-image, which aren't really part of the stated topic of privilege.)

Hey Aggrax, as I've mentioned before I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and depression. And one of the things that my anxiety disorder causes me to do is binge eat, in a way that is unhealthy to me. See, for me, I self medicate with food. Fatty foods, starchy foods, those are the ones I gravitate to, and I will sit down for a meal and eat them to an unhealthy extent--it's almost like a compulsion. But I know why I personally do this--for me, it provides a brief, sweet respite from my chronic anxiety. Fatty foods and sweet foods just send pleasure signals to our brain, we can't help it, its how evolution made us seek those foods out when they were incredibly scarce and we needed ever last calorie for survival. So no matter how crap I feel, no matter how exhausted or worn down or depressed or anxious or hopeless I am, even when nothing is working and no one is able to help, a giant pile of deep fried junk food will always enable me to feel some small amount of pleasure.

But more importantly, I self-medicate with food by eating a lot of it, double or triple the amount my body needs in a meal. Because when I eat that much, when I eat to the point of feeling so full I can't move, I don't feel the anxiety anymore. The dull feeling of fullness, of being absolutely stuffed takes precedent, at least temporarily, over the chronic feelings of anxiety, of unhappiness, of worthlessness and all that other crap. And sometimes, when I binge eat so much like that, I'll eat myself in a lethargic state, sometimes even being able to collapse into sleep, sweet numbing sleep. Because when I sleep, same as when I overeat, I don't have to feel anything anymore.

Some people self-medicate with alcohol, or drugs. I self medicate with food. And I hate myself for it, I hate all the weight that I gain and how gross I feel after I eat all that or wake up from my binge induced nap. But the thing is Aggrax, I don't think you would hate me for how I eat. I think you would recognize me as a fellow person in pain struggling with mental health issues, who picked up some of what my therapist would call "maladaptive coping mechanisms", ways to deal with the anxiety and depression when we didn't have anything else that worked, things that work in the moment but don't help us long-term.

So Aggrax, I don't want to ever speak for you, or throw out diagnoses or anything, but it sounds a lot to me like you eat in a similar way, to cope with anxiety and stress. I know you've never said that directly, but I remember a post you made about skipping a medical appointment that scared you to go to Taco Bell, which sounds a lot like something I would do.

Also, on the topic of maladaptive coping mechanisms, I know it's a big scary phrase but for the most part they're only things that hurt ourselves, like withdrawing and isolating when depressed, or things like cutting, binge eating, unhealthy drinking and so on. They're not things that make us bad people in any way, they're just things that we learned to cope in the short term that just don't work in the long term. And even when they do affect other people... People generally understand and will be sympathetic. For example, as I mentioned previously two of my close friends grew up in abusive households, and one commonality that they both have is a fair amount of trust issues. Like for example, they will often not be completely honest with therapists or other professionals who are trying to help them, which often prevents them from being able to receive the help they really need. Sometimes this can be very frustrating to witness as a friend, watching them metaphorically shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to getting the help that they need. Also, sometimes they'll display this behavior towards me and other friends as well, sometimes I'll be talking to one of my friends and I'll get the feeling that I'm not getting the complete story or they're talking around me about what is going on, giving me hints but not really saying anything. Sometimes they'll withdraw completely and refuse to say anything, or I'll find out weeks later that they were in a place of crisis but never told anyone. And yeah, I won't lie, that can be frustrating to deal with as a friend, and makes me sometimes want to yell at them "ARRGGGHHH!!! WHY WON'T YOU JUST BE STRAIGHT WITH ME?!" But the thing is, I can understand where their evasiveness and trust issues came from, I can understand and have sympathy for the fact that they're never trying to be deceitful people, that they don't ever mean to shut me out or leave me feeling frustrated or confused, that none of this is intentional and most of all, it's not their fault. They grew up as children learning from a very early age that keeping secrets and not being totally honest was the best way to keep themselves safe, that the people they were told they could trust they couldn't actually trust at all, and they couldn't rely on anyone other than themselves when it came down to it. Now that they're no longer in the abusive homes that they grew up in, of course those things that they learned don't hold true, and holding onto those beliefs actually harms them, because it prevents them from getting help and reaching out when they need it. But that's the thing about maladaptive coping mechanisms--they don't just disappear when they no longer function as intended for us. They become habit, subconscious, and we revert to them automatically unless we work really really hard to do otherwise, because it's just what we've learned at some time works, and we stick with it.

...Wow, I've been rambling here. Anyway Aggrax, I highly suspect that you wouldn't blame or hate me for the binge eating that I do. And if you wouldn't blame me, why would you blame yourself for doing a similar thing?

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Post by Aggrax Tue Oct 20, 2015 3:36 pm

There needs to be some sort of accountability in my life for the choices I made. I can't just hide behind the belief that I have some kind of mental illness as a way to absolve myself of all blame or culpability. I blame myself because I am the one TO BLAME for the situation. I refuse to change and actively push away and deceive people that are attempting to help me. Try and dress it up all you want, but at the end of the day it's just me being a selfish asshole. Everything else is a lie.
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Post by Enail Tue Oct 20, 2015 3:50 pm

What purpose is blame serving here?
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Post by Jayce Tue Oct 20, 2015 11:12 pm

Prajnaparamita wrote:

Hey Aggrax, as I've mentioned before I have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and depression. And one of the things that my anxiety disorder causes me to do is binge eat, in a way that is unhealthy to me. See, for me, I self medicate with food. Fatty foods, starchy foods, those are the ones I gravitate to, and I will sit down for a meal and eat them to an unhealthy extent--it's almost like a compulsion. But I know why I personally do this--for me, it provides a brief, sweet respite from my chronic anxiety. Fatty foods and sweet foods just send pleasure signals to our brain, we can't help it, its how evolution made us seek those foods out when they were incredibly scarce and we needed ever last calorie for survival. So no matter how crap I feel, no matter how exhausted or worn down or depressed or anxious or hopeless I am, even when nothing is working and no one is able to help, a giant pile of deep fried junk food will always enable me to feel some small amount of pleasure.

But more importantly, I self-medicate with food by eating a lot of it, double or triple the amount my body needs in a meal. Because when I eat that much, when I eat to the point of feeling so full I can't move, I don't feel the anxiety anymore. The dull feeling of fullness, of being absolutely stuffed takes precedent, at least temporarily, over the chronic feelings of anxiety, of unhappiness, of worthlessness and all that other crap. And sometimes, when I binge eat so much like that, I'll eat myself in a lethargic state, sometimes even being able to collapse into sleep, sweet numbing sleep. Because when I sleep, same as when I overeat, I don't have to feel anything anymore.

Some people self-medicate with alcohol, or drugs. I self medicate with food. And I hate myself for it, I hate all the weight that I gain and how gross I feel after I eat all that or wake up from my binge induced nap. But the thing is Aggrax, I don't think you would hate me for how I eat. I think you would recognize me as a fellow person in pain struggling with mental health issues, who picked up some of what my therapist would call "maladaptive coping mechanisms", ways to deal with the anxiety and depression when we didn't have anything else that worked, things that work in the moment but don't help us long-term.

So Aggrax, I don't want to ever speak for you, or throw out diagnoses or anything, but it sounds a lot to me like you eat in a similar way, to cope with anxiety and stress. I know you've never said that directly, but I remember a post you made about skipping a medical appointment that scared you to go to Taco Bell, which sounds a lot like something I would do.

Also, on the topic of maladaptive coping mechanisms, I know it's a big scary phrase but for the most part they're only things that hurt ourselves, like withdrawing and isolating when depressed, or things like cutting, binge eating, unhealthy drinking and so on. They're not things that make us bad people in any way, they're just things that we learned to cope in the short term that just don't work in the long term. And even when they do affect other people... People generally understand and will be sympathetic. For example, as I mentioned previously two of my close friends grew up in abusive households, and one commonality that they both have is a fair amount of trust issues. Like for example, they will often not be completely honest with therapists or other professionals who are trying to help them, which often prevents them from being able to receive the help they really need. Sometimes this can be very frustrating to witness as a friend, watching them metaphorically shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to getting the help that they need. Also, sometimes they'll display this behavior towards me and other friends as well, sometimes I'll be talking to one of my friends and I'll get the feeling that I'm not getting the complete story or they're talking around me about what is going on, giving me hints but not really saying anything. Sometimes they'll withdraw completely and refuse to say anything, or I'll find out weeks later that they were in a place of crisis but never told anyone. And yeah, I won't lie, that can be frustrating to deal with as a friend, and makes me sometimes want to yell at them "ARRGGGHHH!!! WHY WON'T YOU JUST BE STRAIGHT WITH ME?!" But the thing is, I can understand where their evasiveness and trust issues came from, I can understand and have sympathy for the fact that they're never trying to be deceitful people, that they don't ever mean to shut me out or leave me feeling frustrated or confused, that none of this is intentional and most of all, it's not their fault. They grew up as children learning from a very early age that keeping secrets and not being totally honest was the best way to keep themselves safe, that the people they were told they could trust they couldn't actually trust at all, and they couldn't rely on anyone other than themselves when it came down to it. Now that they're no longer in the abusive homes that they grew up in, of course those things that they learned don't hold true, and holding onto those beliefs actually harms them, because it prevents them from getting help and reaching out when they need it. But that's the thing about maladaptive coping mechanisms--they don't just disappear when they no longer function as intended for us. They become habit, subconscious, and we revert to them automatically unless we work really really hard to do otherwise, because it's just what we've learned at some time works, and we stick with it.

As a person that grew up with abusive parents, there have been countless instances where I never open up to anybody about it at all, my best friend told me that I can always come back to him even if I isolate myself for months (which I have done before) and that I could talk with him about my problems. I would talk to him about some hardships but  on the days when I'm actually crying my eyes out I have never told him about it, I have never told him about any of the worst case scenarios. He knows I have lots of problems with my family but he never gets a clearer picture.  I have never been always completely upfront with counsellors either, I was honest that I brought up some instances of emotional abuse but I would never bring up any of the direct physical abuse issues or that I would tell them some of the more scary stuff, like that I get a little bit anxious when I see kitchen knives because one time my mom pointed her finger at a kitchen knife and told me to kill myself with it, cause I was being a useless human being in the household. The best I could do was to summarise, and use the words they have been physically abusive to me in the past.

I would blame myself for not being able to take care of myself, and all my counsellors have told me that I can be very mean to myself, and have helped me to be less mean. The most recent counsellor helped me identify that I burden a lot of problems on myself, which made me more mentally frustrated and anxious. Blaming yourself dosen't help makes things better, it makes things worst. You don't have to tell yourself how  terrible you are in order to take responsibility. You can just say you'll do something about it.

I don't binge eat much but I do like to drink coca cola or tea when I feel terrible. There were days where I went to buy 2 litres of coke, and drink it. It made me feel better. Right now I have an entire jug of black tea right next to me. I don't blame myself for being a horrible human being for doing that anymore, like I used to, because I felt terrible, there was something that was accessible that I could do to make me feel better right now so I did it.

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Post by Aggrax Sat Oct 24, 2015 4:46 am

I don't want to imply that anyone in a stressful and abusive situation is to blame for any comfort behaviors that result from their situation.

The difference, as I see it, is that my behaviors aren't the result of a stressful situation, but rather a lifetime of poor choices that I have been to lazy and stupid to fix. One is a coping mechanism that the person employing it can't be blamed for due to outside circumstances. The other is entirely the fault of the person in question.
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Post by reboot Sat Oct 24, 2015 11:02 am

Aggrax, does all this negative self talk help you in any way? For example, does it motivate you to stick to your diabetic diet?
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Post by Aggrax Wed Oct 28, 2015 3:43 am

I'm not really sure what help has to do with it? Even if it isn't immediately or obviously helpful, it's the truth. That's the more important factor.
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Post by eselle28 Wed Oct 28, 2015 5:08 am

Aggrax wrote:I'm not really sure what help has to do with it? Even if it isn't immediately or obviously helpful, it's the truth. That's the more important factor.

Even if we take the claim that these thoughts are true and accept that as accurate, I still kind of question the claim that because things are true, someone should spend a great deal of time thinking about them. A bunch of people died to day from totally preventable causes, and that's true. There are some really complicated math proofs in existence, and those are true. Small animals living near you went about their lives doing small animal things, and that's true. You woke up this morning and did whatever else you did but think about your eating habits, and that's true.

I'm not saying that to minimize the problem. It's more that I think that the fact that something is true doesn't necessarily give it title to a big plot of your headspace, where it's then free to build a big McMansion and never cut its lawn and have loud parties on Monday nights. You can pick which true things you give the most time and attention to, and I'd argue that, "Is this helpful?" is one of several considerations from picking among self-blaming thoughts about eating habits versus everything else that's true in the world, or even everything else that's true that directly affects your life.

I think it might be worth thinking about whether this blaming isn't so much truth telling to yourself or making progress toward altering it as just the other side of the coin from binge behavior. Kicking yourself has its own perverse rewards, after all, and a lot of people who binge on various things get as much caught up in the shame part of the dance as the indulgence part.
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Post by reboot Wed Oct 28, 2015 8:44 am

eselle28 wrote:
Aggrax wrote:I'm not really sure what help has to do with it? Even if it isn't immediately or obviously helpful, it's the truth. That's the more important factor.

..... You can pick which true things you give the most time and attention to, and I'd argue that, "Is this helpful?" is one of several considerations from picking among self-blaming thoughts about eating habits versus everything else that's true in the world, or even everything else that's true that directly affects your life.

Eselle said it more elegantly than I could. It is true, so what? Many things are true but do not need to be dwelled upon. The sun rose: true. The people in your city did what they did yesterday: true. You wore X color shirt: true. Somebody was born: true. Somebody died: true. So why pick this one truth to obsess over? Why this truth and no other? What does dwelling on this specific truth bring you that no other truth brings?

I think it might be worth thinking about whether this blaming isn't so much truth telling to yourself or making progress toward altering it as just the other side of the coin from binge behavior. Kicking yourself has its own perverse rewards, after all, and a lot of people who binge on various things get as much caught up in the shame part of the dance as the indulgence part.

Eselle brings up an excellent point. Shame and self degradation can feel terrible in a good way (or good in a terrible way). Anything done to excess is bingeing and all bingeing follows the same pleasure/shame spiral. It can be a bit mentally addictive. Are you dwelling on this because it is true? Or because, in a way, kicking yourself in the ass feels satisfying?
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Post by Aggrax Fri Oct 30, 2015 3:49 pm

The difference is that these things are both true and relevant to my life right now. It may be true that the shirt I'm wearing is grey, but that doesn't have any bearing on my life.
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Post by Enail Fri Oct 30, 2015 4:16 pm

But even if it's relevant to your life right now, is putting a lot of energy into thinking about it a useful way to react to it for you? It seems like you've focused very hard on thinking about yourself as lazy and stupid for quite a long time, and it doesn't sound like that's made it any easier for you not to do the things that make you think you're lazy and stupid. So it just doesn't seem like a great use of your time or energy.

How would you feel about accepting that, whatever judgement you have of yourself, that's the way things are for now? And then instead of thinking about that judgement or berating yourself for it, say "okay, sure, but I'm going to think about X now" and put that thought and energy into something else you'd like to do or think about?
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Post by Aggrax Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:08 pm

That seems really irresponsible. Every day I wake up reminded of my failure to take care of myself because it's shackled to me. I'm fat and every step, every labored breath, reminds me of that. Just ignoring these problems is what got me into the situation I'm in now.
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Post by Hirundo Bos Sat Oct 31, 2015 6:40 pm

I don't think that the opposite of ignoring a situation is blaming yourself for it, though... rather, it's just another kind of inaction. And it is stressful, taking away even more resources that could have been used for self-control. Because willpower isn't a character trait, it's a limited resource... no one can do much of anything when their mental resources are overstrained.
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Post by reboot Sat Oct 31, 2015 7:39 pm

Aggrax wrote:That seems really irresponsible. Every day I wake up reminded of my failure to take care of myself because it's shackled to me. I'm fat and every step, every labored breath, reminds me of that. Just ignoring these problems is what got me into the situation I'm in now.

Is obsessively reminding yourself of them getting you out of the situation? What would happen if you restricted thinking about it to once a day? Or once a week? How is repeating this truth, rather than any other truth, making things different?
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Post by Aggrax Wed Nov 04, 2015 5:12 pm

So I'm just supposed to ignore the fact that I've made such a horrible mess of my life that I'm slowly killing myself? That I won't live to see 40 because I choose to be irresponsible and to not listen to the people that know better, that are better than I am? Not thinking about these things is what got me into this situation in the first place. It left me with no money, shitty credit and horrible insurance. So what if I'm not "happy"? Happiness isn't a right people are entitled to and its not something that everyone needs or deserves.
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Post by Enail Fri Nov 06, 2015 1:24 am

It seems to me that there's a pretty wide space between "not ignoring" and "focusing on intensely." And it looks to me like you're pretty far towards the latter. And it seems like you get something, or are hoping to get something, out of focusing on it, like you derive some benefit from punishing yourself, or that you think you will if you do it enough. Sometimes when you post about it, it feels like you're asking us to join in with you on punishing yourself or to affirm that it's the right thing to do. Is that something you're looking for here?

I agree with you that happiness isn't a right, and I don't really think it's something people deserve or not deserve. It's just a feeling. I think we often want it to be something that good people get and bad people don't, or something to be earned or denied through virtuous behavior. But it's just a feeling, it doesn't signal morality or approval/lack of it any more than the sensation of water on the skin does.

Do you think not being happy will help your situation? Do you think being happy sometimes would harm it?
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Post by Aggrax Sat Nov 07, 2015 6:46 am

Every time I start feeling happier I get a sense of guilt, because these feeling come from distractions or from ignoring a responsibility. It's always a choice between doing what I should be doing, the responsible, productive thing, or doing what makes me happy at the time even though it's not healthy or useful or productive.

I know people don't believe me when I say this, but I really am a lazy person by nature. If I didn't dwell on these things I would just lounge around, making things worse. If I didn't constantly berate myself for not working hard enough, I would work a lot less than I do. But I'm not sure even that is going to matter anymore. Just yesterday I was told that I need to switch from insulin pens to a vial and syringe because my insurance doesn't cover pens anymore and I feel like I won't be able to handle the complexity of it. I'll do something to mess up and I'm afraid I'm going to screw it up so much that I do something like accidentally inject an air bubble into my veins trying to do this and accidentally kill myself and I'm torn between being incredibly afraid of this happening and just... not caring because I'm already so bad at this I've probably reduced my life expectancy to less than 10 year remaining anyway.
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Post by Wondering Sat Nov 07, 2015 4:00 pm

If it helps decrease your worry, that fear of an air bubble in your vein that will kill you is kind of an old, hold-over bogeyman of diabetic fears. From a time when syringes were glass and needles were huge, both in width and length.  

Unless you're injecting a full syringe of pure air right into a vein, you can't really get a bubble large enough to be a health problem, and since you're injecting into the subcutaneous fat layer, you're not hitting veins anyway.

So, tip for you if you haven't already gotten your syringes, get the smallest guage (width), which these days I think is 31 (the higher the number, the narrower the needle) and the shortest needle. Depending on your manufacturer, this is probably called ultra-short.

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Post by Aggrax Mon Nov 09, 2015 12:10 am

I have the appointment to discuss this situation tomorrow. That does make me feel a little better, but I still worry about doing something wrong and seriously harming myself. Sometimes when I do the injections it feels weird and I get a bit of bleeding. Very occasionally I've also developed a rather large bruise around the area. I don't know if I'm not hitting the right area or what I'm doing wrong.
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Post by Wondering Mon Nov 09, 2015 2:28 am

Yeah, you'll occasionally get bruises or a little bleeding. Sometimes you might get a lump under your skin from the insulin you've injected. Sometimes you hit a muscle instead of fat and it feels...tight? You're not doing anything necessarily wrong. It's just stuff that happens with imperfect bodies and imperfect us who have to inject with imperfect means.

There's no worry about hitting the wrong area, really. The needle's not long enough to hit anywhere bad, and if you did by some extraordinary means inject directly into a vein, you'd know it pretty fast, because the insulin would hit your blood stream immediately and you'd go into hypoglycemia. I'm not saying that to give you an extra worry. I'm saying that because it hasn't happened to you (or you would have said something); it hasn't happened to me and I've been at this 36 years through syringes, pen needle, and pump; and I've never heard of it happening to anyone I know.

My advice would be to spend your energy on learning the syringe and bottle system and not on worrying about injecting badly.

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Post by Aggrax Thu Nov 19, 2015 1:37 am

So not only have my prescription been sitting at the pharmacy for a week because their automated message telling me my prescription is ready for pickup is exactly the same as the automated message telling me that I need to refill prescriptions and I get, like, 5 of those a week and I just delete them because their automated system is completely out of sync with when I actually need refills so I didn't actually know that it was ready until I got distracted while listening to my voicemail and the whole message played but I found out the same day that I fucked up something and my car wouldn't start so now it's being repaired which is going to cost my family even more money because I have so little money that I couldn't even afford a loaf of bread if I had to buy it for myself.
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Post by Aggrax Thu Nov 26, 2015 4:15 am

I reused one of the needles for my insulin pen tonight. I ran out of the needles two days ago but couldn't make myself give enough of a shit to call the pharmacy and order new ones. The same reason why I haven't picked up the vials that have been ready or ordered a refill of the thyroid medicine that I'm supposed to be taking. Honestly I'm not even sure why I bothered to do an injection tonight. I've been doing this to myself for 4 years now. I don't see the point.
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Eating, self-image and coping mechanisms (split from Privilege and Guilt) Empty Re: Eating, self-image and coping mechanisms (split from Privilege and Guilt)

Post by Wondering Thu Nov 26, 2015 4:22 am

Have you thought about doing mail order for your prescriptions so that they're just delivered to your house and you don't have to go get them? You get a 90-day supply, and most insurance companies love this because it's actually cheaper then filling prescriptions month by month at a brick and mortar pharmacy.

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Post by Aggrax Fri Nov 27, 2015 12:29 am

I don't think that would work. I take my medication so infrequently that I would just end up with a huge surplus sitting around the house. It's why I don't have any prescriptions on auto-refill anymore.
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Post by Aggrax Tue Dec 01, 2015 12:57 am

Well, after two hours of run around with my parents and the pharmacy, I now have another months pens for my long acting insulin, along with a fresh box of needles for those, as well as vials and syringes for my meal time insulin and all of my pills refilled. It took three trips to the pharmacy to get this all done. 1 to get the pills and find out that the pharmacy hadn't noticed my doctors office had faxed over a notice to fill the vials prescription. 2 to get the vials that I thought were already ready for me to pick up, which I took home and found out were only the meal time insulin and didn't come with any syringes, which resulted in a 30 minute call to the pharmacy (half of which was waiting on hold) and trip number 3, where I finally got everything I needed.

Thankfully the people working at the pharmacy were very patient with me while I ran around like a dope trying to figure out what the hell I need and what I'm supposed to be doing.
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