Needles @ Work
A Crohn’s Story
It’s Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness Week, and I’ve been wanting to write a longer piece for it, but I’ve been too tired to get it together. So in lieu of something more comprehensive, I’m just going to talk about my day yesterday.
I take an expensive medication called Stelara. When medicines are expensive, insurance companies create a bunch of unnecessary hoops you need to jump through in order to get them filled. To get my most recent refill of Stelara, I had to spend over 3 hours on the phone with my insurance, their specialty pharmacy, and my doctor’s office combined. During one of these calls, I got disconnected after 57 minutes and when I called back they made me start the process over again.
In situations like these, you feel like a nag: calling your doctor to see if the pharmacy sent over the forms they were supposed to (they didn’t); calling the pharmacy to see if your doctor’s office sent over the forms they were supposed to (they didn’t). Rinse. Repeat. And the actual time spent on the phone (which has to be during the workday because that’s when these places are open) is frankly nothing compared to the amount of mental time and energy wasted worrying about it.
Earlier this week, my insurance finally approved delivery of the medication, but because of all of the hoops I had to jump through, I was overdue for it. This meant I needed it delivered as soon as possible. The medication needs to be refrigerated, so someone has to be there to accept it and immediately pop that sucker in a fridge. Since I don’t have a doorman in my building, I had to get it delivered to work and store it in a public refrigerator there (hence my somewhat excessive but necessary written warnings to NOT THROW AWAY WITHOUT CONSULTING HANNAH CHASE).
So it came to be that I had to take my most recent dose of Stelara (by injecting it into my thigh) while I was at work. In preparation for this, I had brought one of my many sharps containers from home, and eventually I gave myself the injection in a single stall bathroom at the office. Is this even allowed at work? I don’t know. But I didn’t feel I had much of a choice.
Upon returning from the bathroom, I mentioned the whole thing to one of my coworkers and she said, “I could never do that — I could never give myself a shot.” But what I know is: of course she could, if she needed to. And that’s the thing about coping with chronic illness: no one wants to get good at it, but you get really good at it.
Yesterday was an annoying day. Did I want to give myself a shot in a shared work bathroom? No. Do I like giving myself shots, period? No. Am I without qualms about storing a medication in a public space at work, where others can see it? No. But you do what you need to do. You get creative, and scrappy, and resilient.
And then you tuck your unopenable sharps container under your desk and head to your 2020 planning meeting.
