Tonight's picture was taken in May of 2009. Specifically it was at the Mattie March, an event Mattie's care community organized to show support for his incredible cancer journey. Mattie was pictured with Bob, "the Magic Man." Mattie and Bob performed the famous Peanut Booger Trick! Or at Bob called it, the Mattie Brown! Bob came religiously to the hospital to teach Mattie magic the year he was in the hospital. They had a special connection! Also note the cutie sitting behind Mattie, holding the umbrella! That is Brandon, Mattie's best cancer buddy! Loyal until the end.
Quote of the day: Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable. ~ The Tin Man
Reminder.... This Sunday is Mattie Miracle's 15th anniversary Walk! Are you participating? Sign up, donate, and purchase raffle tickets! We LOVE our supporters. You have made the miracles possible for 15 years.
This morning after I got my dad up, showered, dressed, downstairs for breakfast and dropped off at his memory care center, I then came home and got back on the phone. This is part two from yesterday's blog posting! I called Amgen, to see if the $1,500 that was sent to my former specialty pharmacy was returned to my co-pay card. Naturally all the work I did on Thursday was a waste of time. Amgen confirmed that my $1,500 co-pay assistance was NOT returned to my account. The representative however, gave me a nugget of information! He suggested when I call the specialty pharmacy to work this out, that I tell them to call Amgen directly, while I wait on the line! That was excellent advice and I stored in my memory bank.
After I got off the phone with him, I called the specialty pharmacy! The first woman I spoke to gets a F! Rude to no end and basically said that I wasn't a patient of theirs, couldn't find me in the system and therefore couldn't talk to me. She then hung up on me! I wanted to scream. Naturally I called right back and thankfully got a different representative. He found me in the system, and could also see all my call logs from the week. He quickly deduced that he couldn't help me. So he stayed on the line and connected me with the pharmacy's billing department. There I met Debbie. A lovely lady, who wanted to help. She got her supervisor involved who said that they needed to consult with their pharmacy department, because it was possible that the pharmacy itself had to cancel my prescription and thereby trigger the copay to get returned to me. They had me on hold for a while. Turns out, NO! The pharmacist said the issue wasn't on there end, and I have to go back to the billing department.
The only benefit today was I was working with the A team. Each person (after the one who hung up on me) was competent, very customer focused and I felt was working with me to get this resolved. Which is a blessing. In any case, it was Debbie who connected me with Duane. Duane is a billing manager of the specialty pharmacy and a God sent!
Want to know the first question Duane asked me? He said, tell me what has been going on and I will try to get down to the bottom of this! Beautiful! He did not make assumptions or dismiss me, but wanted to hear my story. In any case, I suggested that Duane call Amgen while I wait. He indeed did this and Amgen verified that his specialty pharmacy is sitting on my $1,500 co-pay! Once Amgen inserted themselves into my case, things started to move. I wouldn't have even thought to do this, but thanks to the nugget of information I learned from the Amgen rep this morning, I finally got somewhere with the pharmacy.
The major issue I faced was the pharmacy knew they did not fill my prescription so in their mind that I meant they wouldn't have used my co-pay assistance. But this is where I found a loophole. Because I used this pharmacy in the past, Amgen naturally sent my co-pay to them, whether I planned on filling the script with them or not! I have no idea how they magically found my co-pay today, but I am not fighting city hall. Between yesterday and today, I was on the phone for four hours trying to access $1,500. I will check back in with Duane on Thursday to verify that the reimbursement occurred!
If you have been following along the last couple of days, then you know I am reading a book called Soul Broken. The book is about coping with ambiguous grief. Ambiguous grief is a person's profound sense of loss and sadness that is not associated with a death of a loved one. The person in question is still alive. As Stephanie Sarazin states:
To determine if you or a loved one are experiencing ambiguous grief, consider your answers to the following five statements:
- You have experienced a significant relationship loss, and your loved one is still living.
- You have hope that your lost loved one will return to you as they once were or that the relationship will be restored to what it once was.
- You find memories or the loss of the relationship occupy your thoughts.
- Your feel disconnected from yourself or others because of the loss.
- You feel as though this loss has made it difficult to move forward in your life.
I am moving my way through the book. Overall, I am NOT a big self help book kind of person. Typically I find them either trite or too prescriptive. That said, I am trying to take in what she is saying and one of the things she discussed is remaining present (something I learned first hand when Mattie was diagnosed with cancer! Not sure I ever graduated back to being future focused.). She feels that all of us can be grateful for at least three things in our daily life. Trust me when I tell you that I am in such a state most days, that this is a very difficult task. But it is a task that forces me to go back to the basics.
So with this in mind, the three things that I am grateful for today are:
- Greg at Amgen (who suggested that when I call the pharmacy, that I tell them to call Amgen directly)
- Debbie in the pharmacy division of my specialty pharmacy. For her kindness, compassion and desire to help her customers.
- Duane, the manager in the specialty pharmacy billing department. Who listened, was proactive, and found a resolution.
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