The Cycle Continues: My Nightmare Experience with CVS Caremark

It has been a CRAZY few days, filled with tears, hope, anger, and when it all came together some big huge belly laughs.

After a second round of Letrozole mid cycle, my body just doesn't want to ovulate and so my doctor immediately started me on Follistim for two nights. Once an ultrasound can confirm that Follistim worked, then I take the trigger shot Ovidrel.

It has been a NIGHTMARE trying to get these two medications through CVS Caremark, who will only cover them through their own mail order specialty pharmacy. Unfortunately I needed Follistim same day and it was 8 hours on and off the phone with them, transferred from person to person each having no record of my previous calls and promising me calls back that never came. (The same thing happened with Ovidril the day before, my doctor had thought I'd be needing it the next morning and getting it approved and shipped was another 8 hour saga the day before).

So between traveling every morning into the city for bloodwork, ultrasounds and acupuncture appointments, and sneaking constant phone calls, I completely LOST it at work after they told me my Ovidrel didn't ship and there was no record of me calling (twice) to request an override for Follistim pickup at a local pharmacy. I left work early a hysterical hormonal mess (so embarrassing) but refused to give up and I finally got confirmation Ovidrel had shipped and Follistim could be picked up locally. I had to give them HELL to finally get to this point.

My husband, left for the 2.5 hour journey in rush hour traffic to get to the one pharmacy they agreed to cover the RX at before they closed and I stayed home to wait for the Ovidrel delivery. Only to open my door an hour after he left and find it sitting on my front steps. It didn't even need a signature! My husband took a vacation day to wait at home for the delivery, my dad came over to monitor the door while we went for my follow up appointment, and I left work early just to make phone calls to get my meds and none of this needed to have happened if CVS Caremark reps could have just done their jobs. This is by far the worst customer service experience of my life. But in the end I got my meds, prayed the days of stress won't hurt the effectiveness and went to inject the Follisitim with a grateful and hopeful heart. Guess what?

The medication cartridge was missing from the box. We called the emergency number at the pharmacy and spoke to a the nicest woman who said this is the craziest thing that has happened to her in all her years of being a pharmacist. 2 of the 3 other packages of Follistim she had were also missing the medicine but PRAISE BE TO GOD she had one last box with the medicine in it. (Apparently there's a nationwide shortage of this stuff). 

So her husband met my husband halfway to get the medicine to us; and finally FINALLY at 10pm I administered my first injection.

What a crazy few days. I'm convinced that the Letrozole hasn't worked because of stress (there's been a lot going on at work) and this cycle just continues to be challenging to the very end. Struggles make you stronger, right?

The icing on the cake is when I opened the box of Ovidrel delivered from CVS Caremark and saw the brochure below. I started laughing like a maniac. Fertility is absolutely NOT your specialty, CVS Caremark. Women struggling with PCOS and infertility wait weeks sometimes months to get to this point in their cycle, and it is completely unacceptable that a prescription benefit provider with untrained employees almost set us back another 30-40 days in our journey and caused so much stress.