The Great Progesterone Debacle

I don't know about you, but just the word "suppository" give me the heebes.  I prefer not to supposit anything, anywhere.  So when you know such a thing is going to occur, you want the whole process to go smoothly (pun intended).

I don't know if I ever told you this, but when I was pregnant with Ellie, my doctor decided that maybe I should give progesterone a try.  If you remember correctly, I had already had three miscarriages, and while the assumption (or my assumption at least) was that it was due to my uterus this could not be proven.  My doctor called me up at home and basically said, "Hey, I can't guarantee this will work but it does for some people.  Let's give it a try."  I was all for giving anything a try.  The rest is history.  Now, maybe it wasn't the progesterone that caused the right amount of voodoo magic for Ellie to come into being.....but part of me feels like it certainly contributed.  So after getting that freakish positive on Sunday, first thing Monday morning I called to see if she would prescribe it again.

As these things tend to go, no one from the doctor's office called me back on Monday.  So first thing Tuesday morning I called back once again.  The receptionist promised that someone would look into it and give me a call.  By 3:00, I was tired of waiting.  You need to start the progesterone as soon as possible for it to be effective.  I called the office once again.  After some file searching, I was told that it was called in on Monday to my local pharmacy (CVS).  This was news to me because a) no one called to tell me that, b) why didn't they just tell me that when I called in the morning, and c)  I was under the impression that this medication has to be specially compounded and only the pharmacy at the hospital does this.

Nevertheless.

I woke Ellie from her nap and bundled her up and off to CVS we went.  Only to be told that they had to special order it and "maybe" it would come in tomorrow so please give them a call before showing up again.  Ugh.  But fine.  That brings us to today.  I called this morning and was told it had come in and I could pick it up anytime.  So after dropping Gabe at the bus stop, Ellie and I schlepped back to CVS to wait in their long pharmacy line.  After being cut in front of by, not one but two senior citizens, the pharmacist sends me off with my prescription.

Once at home, I open the box and what do I find......a freaking chemistry set.  I have fatty acid in a jar, and a glass tube of powdered progesterone, some crazy suppository mold, and various implements to concoct said suppositories.  The instructions were two pages long and were quite involved and used words like, "after the pharmacist mixes..." (the key word being "pharmacist").  Clearly, this was not in my realm of expertise.  I have no desire to perform a chemistry experiment on something I'm about to shove into my body.  So I called the CVS once again.  After being on hold for 10 minutes, I was hung up on and then put on hold again.  Finally, the pharmacist gets on the phone and calls me Stephanie and has no idea what I'm talking about.  Plus, he doesn't speak very good English.  I try to explain the predicament and he finally says, "so you want to bring it back and have us mix it?".  Yes, genius, that's exactly what I've been saying for the LAST TEN MINUTES!  At this point, Ellie has now eaten her whole lunch, and that is no quick task.

Soooo, I bundle the recently unbundled Ellie back up and off we go yet again.  After much more debate and back and forth, and the pharmacist once again calling me Stephanie, I finally convince him to take the box from me.  He  opens the instructions and does a double take.  He confesses at this point that he has no idea how to do this and that he's never seen anything like it before.  At this point, I have absolutely no confidence that I'm going to get an actual progesterone suppository.  But, I wait anyway.  The pharmacist comes back three more times to tell me that its going to take awhile, and do I need this today, and once again that he's never done this before.  Finally, he hands me the mold contraption back with some crazy device to push out the suppositories.  I'm not impressed.

At this point, I figure we are done with this saga.  But no, I figured wrong.

At about 4:00, I finally receive my call from the doctor's office.  They wanted to let me know that they had called in my prescription to the pharmacy in the hospital.  Confused, I mentioned the debacle with CVS.  The nurse seemed skeptical and mentioned again that very few pharmacies are actually skilled with compounding medications.  Yeah, trust me, I know.  Now I'm feeling even less sure of the molded product currently sitting in my fridge.

So what do I do?  I bundle up both kids, neither of whom are the least bit happy about this plan, and get them buckled in the car.  This involves yelling (on my part) and the Gabe's resultant request for a hug (winner mom, let me tell ya).  We drive 30 minutes out to the hospital and finally get the "real" progesterone suppositories that I needed all along.

Now all I have to do is look forward to their wonderful side effects...extreme fatigue, nausea, and headaches....Hooray!