For prescriptions, I have…well…a few. Test strips, several different types of insulin, dexcom sensors, dexcom transmitters, pods, syringes, etc., etc.
They are all on 3 month cycles, but they are always refillable at different times. Different months and different dates.
I have the refill dates for all of them written down on a piece of paper, and whenever I refill one I just write the next refill date down. Just add 3 months.
I have most on automatic refill, but I don’t ever trust the pharmacy or supplier to do it. I want to always stay on top of the dates, in case they mess up and don’t do it when they are supposed to.
My way works fine, but maybe there is a better way? How do you do it?
Paper, what a novel idea. Maybe I should try it! Prior to this spring, we were really good about getting all the refills done at once. I kept the info as a recurring reminder in our shared “home” Google calendar. If, for some reason, the date changes, it’s easy to stop it from recurring and set a new reminder. Theoretically, we can both see it and take action on it.
However this has its issues. For instance, while I was out of town for a prolonged period this year, EH took over getting refills but not on the same date. And we added the OmniPod this year, which is on a different cycle - and it shifted due to insurance shenanigans that took until May to sort out. And the Dex got forgotten at some point and is on a different cycle.
So we’ve been kicking around the idea of making a specific Google “health” calendar that we both have access to, and then tracking ALL health related stuff in there (insurance company argument calls, RX refills, doctor visits and prompts to call to schedule, etc.) (Thanks, @Eric for the nudge )
Can you just not “reset” them all since they’re all on a 3-month window, just work out getting them onto the same pick-up cycle so that you can pick them all up at once? That’s what we do. We have all of those things, and we bundle them all and purchase them all at one time. Everything except our insulin was due to be refilled in early July, but because they messed up our insulin prescription (wrote it for 30-days instead of 90-days), we ended up being on a different schedule for that temporarily. Then, they fixed it, but we held off picking up all the other supplied until the end of July (coming up next week) so that we could just pick them all up at one time.
We get a bundled discount (we only pay co-pay on the insulin and everything else is free) so for us it’s pretty important to bundle everything.
I will add, though, that my wife and I use an app called “Cozi” which we really love…it has the ability to synchronize calendars, shopping lists, etc., and the prescription pick-up dates are on our calendars.
Cozi is great…if I go to the store and I’m shopping for a list that was previously put together, Erin can add something to the list and it will populate automatically on my list in the store.
It also has pop-up reminder notifications for all calendar events. It’s really nifty. You can set recurring events to occur every 90 days, and you’d get notified each 90-days that it’s time to pick up x, or y, if you didn’t bundle.
Resetting some is easy. But for others it is impossible. Like for insulin or syringes, I can nudge those, I have flexibility since I get more than I need.
But for test strips, I have no wiggle room on the date. I suck those things up so fast, there is never any leeway for pushing them back. Same with Dexcom sensors. I don’t get 14+ days on sensors like some people.
So ultimately what happens is if they are in synch, they eventually end up out-of-synch, because I may not need to refill the syringes at the same date, so I let that slip a few weeks or whatever.
Yeah, our transmitters and sensors are on total different schedules than everything else. But you should look into the app I recommended. We have used it for years and we love it. One person populates something and it refreshes on the entire families, whatever…calendar, tasks, shopping lists, to-do lists, etc., We love it.
Also, to add this about changing a prescription dates in order to synch them. If I try telling the pharmacy, “…only refill the script this one time for 4 weeks, and then I will get the next one for 3 months…”, I am afraid that will screw up everything. Who knows what will happen to my prescription. They could end up doing some paperwork bungle that messes it up. I have seen all kinds of nightmares with scripts. Once it is working, I try to leave it alone!
CVS wants us to do “mail order” prescriptions, but we just laugh at them when they say that…Liam has been diabetic for going on 3 years and I don’t think there has been a single time that either the doctor writing the script, or the CVS has screwed up his order. MOST of the time it’s something very stupid that we’ve told them 1,000 times about - like, we use FREESTYLE test strips NOT FREESTYLE LITE!
We’ve told them…you give us 6 months w/o any problems with our prescriptions, then we’ll talk about “mail order”
But for what it’s worth, the FreeStyle strips are interchangeable. The FDA hasn’t approved it yet. And I guess they aren’t even trying to get approval. So they just tell you to use that one particular type of strip.
But you can use either strip.
The reason I know they both work, and it is just an FDA red-tape kind of thing?
When compared to the readings I get using my FreeStyle Lite meter and PDM with the same strip, they are always the same (within 1 or 2 points).
Health Canada has approved the use of both FreeStyle and FreeStyle Lite strips for use with the OmniPod PDM.
So the Canadian version of the FDA is once again one step ahead of the U.S. FDA…
The benefit to mail order with Caremark though is their web portal when you can select the exact medication, strips, whatever you’re looking for on their website and have them fax the script request strait to your docs office then the doc just signs and writes the quantity… so in some ways the likelihood of screwups can actually be reduced… sometimes they still find a way though, and it’s impossible to get ahold of anyone who’s actually capable of adressing any screwups
The other nice thing is the auto renewal, which actually works really well… before your rx expires they automatically fax your doc the renewal paperwork if you set it up that way…
We are accruing quite a stash of goods. lol. We have probably…40 unopened boxes now of the test strips (maybe more). All the other things in an equally large amount. Insulin…we have a ton. And it’s GOOD! One never knows what the future holds. I just keep stockpiling. I make sure to cycle the expiration dates so that the soonest to expire is used up first, though. It’s a job in itself when you have a lot of supplies.
Good problems to have! If you ever need a box of strips, you know who you can call.
I use an excel file. My file contains common things we need to know, like my son’s patient ID, our insurance numbers, phone numbers for each provider, items that we are thinking about ordering but haven’t gotten around to, a record of the last three refills, and estimated date of the next refill, prescription expiration, where we purchased diabetic items if not prescriptions, etc. Basically, it is our Diabetes Dashboard.
Here is a picture example if anyone wants to see it. If you want the file, just PM me.
Same. I bought nicer looking plastic portable units w drawers for all of this stuff and my husband knows that in the event of Zombie Apocalypse or tornado, all of those units are getting packed first.
With the iPhone we use Notes (that share between iPhone users who are invited) and Eric’s set up the same thing with Google Calendar which works well for us. The app you’re talking about sounds cool though too!
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Long day.
