Digital Johnny, Real Johnny

UC Berkeley Hell: Just Like Old Times

If there's anything that I miss less about UC Berkeley than the street punks on Telegraph, pseudo-liberals with their causes of the month and everything being up-hill from everywhere else, it would have to been the endless amount of red tape and bureaucracy that you have to wade through to get anything done around there. Why this sudden resurgence of my hatred for Cal bureaucracy? What a great question; let me tell you...

One part of my tale about my ultra-drunken St. Patty's Day in New York City was that I somehow lost my pills that night. Nothing else was missing from my purse, so I didn't even notice that they were gone until I went to take them the next night while Renee and I were at the "exploded Christmas tree" Indian restaurant. Of course I freaked out (b/c that's what I do best in life) and tried to find a 24-hour pharmacy in NYC that would issue me an emergency pack, but I guess that's against the law, so I had to wait until the next day (and until the Tang Center at Cal was open) to find a pharmacy that could call the UC so I could get a refill ASAP.

(Aside: I really love how many, many, many kinds of drugs are readily available on the streets and on drug-store shelves that are much more dangerous and powerful than birth control pills, and that people don't know how to take as well as women who've been on the pill for years know how to take theirs. Perhaps this is more an issue about keeping the price of birth control ridiculously high rather than any real concerns about women's health... but I just think it's interesting).

So, anyway, after a couple hours at the Walgreens near Union Square in NYC, the pharmacist got in touch with the Tang Center. I told the guy I only needed one since this was just an "emergency", so the UC transferred my prescription, I paid as much for that one pack as I had paid for my last 6 months worth through the UC and went on my way. So that was all good.

Now it's a month later, and I need refills again, so I phoned in a refill order to the UC last on April 1st. The Tang Center called me back on the 2nd and said that because they had to transfer the prescription back to the UC system, it would take 7 days and I had to come to Cal to fill out a transfer request. I didn't get that message until after business hours on the 2nd, so I called on the 5th and the lady told me that it did take 7 days to transfer back, but she was nice enough to take my transfer request over the phone.

So, today (after running a few almost-as-frustrating and needlessly time-consuming errands), I took BART out to Berkeley to pick up my refills from the Tang Center. When I got there, the girl at the window told me that they had called the Walgreens in NYC who had told them that I had no refills left. She said they had tried to call me to let me know about the problem, but they only had my contact information from when I lived in Oakland (although I had given them my new phone number and my cell number on both the 1st and the 5th). She also said I could make an appointment for another exam to get a new prescription, but this was totally unacceptable b/c 1) I just had my exam in October and 2) I don't have enough meds left to schedule an appointment in the over-crowded UC health services system. So, she said that I could call the pharmacy in NYC to see if that was some kind of mistake and have them call the Tang Center to transfer it back.

So, glad that I now have free long distance, I called the Walgreens in NYC and went through the schpeal I had already gone through on the 1st and the 5th and just then at the Tang Center that I was on Spring Break, lost my pills, had to get an emergency pack and that I should have at least another 6 months of refills, but somehow the UC was saying I didn't have any. I had to wait for the head pharmacist to be available for me to talk to and tell him my whole story again. He told me that although it may be the policy of the University and/or California to transfer the entire prescription in such a case, New York State law only allows them to transfer one refill, so that any extra refills transferred to New York were instantly "lost"... meaning that I really had no refills left according to anyone in the system since the UC closed out that prescription number and New York considered itself to have given me all of my refills. I'm really glad the pharmacist told me that while I was having my prescription transferred from California...

So, I went back inside the Tang Center, waited in line (again) and had to tell another person my whole story. He was like "yep, that's what happens". I had this vision of myself hopping up on the counter and slapping him across his smug face, but I was just like "So... what do I do now? I only have 3 days left!" with my most forced smile. He said that I should call Hastings and have them call the Tang Center to verify when I had my exam so they could create a new prescription for me. Great. So, I called Hastings, explained my story two more times, once to the receptionist and again to the Nurse Practitioner, Jackie (the only really caring, on-the-ball person I had spoken to all day). She said she would check my records and phone in the new prescription to the Tang Center, and give me a call so I could go inside and wait in the (hot, overcrowded) waiting room. So, I read more contracts (I had already read 25 pages just while out on these errands) until Jackie called me back. When she did, she told me that she thought she should tell me that 2 weeks ago the UC had lost their contract with their supplier, so that it was now $72 for 3 month's worth instead of just $24. She suggested I just have Hastings put in the new prescription at a regular drug store since it would probably be cheaper in the long run since the UC dispenses generics anyway. So I said that I would verify the prices at Tang and then call her back to either have her send the Rx to Tang or to a regular store once I got a number for one.

So, I came back home on BART (I finished all of the contracts reading I had brought with me for the day while in the tube), found the number of the Rite-Aid near my house and called to give it to Jackie. She just called me back to verify that she submitted my new prescription and now I can finally put all this crap behind me. So, due to some oddities in the differences between state prescription laws and the crappiness of the UC system, I wasted a greater part of the day and experienced a lot of totally gratuitous stress. The ineptitude that seems to permeate Cal never ceases to amaze me, and doesn't seem to have ceased to have power over me, even after I haven't been a student there for almost 3 years.