Boys will be Joys

I was anticipating a difficult week at work on Monday. I already knew that our van, which is vital to our work, was out of commission. I also knew that some difficult converstions needed to take place and some difficult decisions needed to be made.

I spent my week buried in my computer working on solutions in various forms. but one small and wonderful thing, brought a bit of joy each day.

Just a few short years ago, I found out about patient assitance programs offered by various drug companies for uninsured patients on limited incomes. It started after a conversation with a patient who said, “I’m not going to take that. I can’t afford it.”

I was determined to find a way.

Long story short, we learned about patient assistance programs and one by one patients started getting life-saving medications for free.

When I owned my boutique, getting a box of merchandise was like Christmas for me. I could hardly wait to open it and see all of the new merchandise.

As wierd as it may sound, receiving insulin was just as exciting. Each time a box arrived, that meant someone was the recipient of something that was extremely valuable.

• They could not afford this medication or acquire it without the help of others.
• It was free – no sales gimmicks, no monthly fees, no obligation.
• It was life changing, or you could say, life-saving.

Free clinics have an extremely high percentage of patients with type 2 diabetes. So, when this started three years ago, I thought, “It would be amazing if we we started receiving shipments of insulin daily“.

It was a bit of a hurdle because applications are tedious, but I knew just how great the need was in our clinic. As my medical director said, these programs changed the way we did medicine in a free clinic.

Today, we have over 40 different medications getting shipped to our patients. Collectively, our patients are saving over $23,000 a month.

This week, though, through stress, and tears, and migraines I took notice each day – that we received at least one shipment of insulin. Eachof those boxes are life-changing for someone in our community.

This week was kind of terrible in a few ways, but pretty wonderful in a lot of other ways. I sort of forgot about that wish I made three years ago, but if there was ever a week I needed such a powerful reminder this was it.