a temporary sigh of relief

Here’s the promised update…

This morning, I hopped on the public transit to go to the pharmacy and get things squared away. After I reached my stop, I called Customs Woman to make sure I was on the right track. The phone just kept ringing. No answer. That’s not what I needed to have happen.

So I went over to our stadium, which is near both the pharmacy and the doctor’s office, waited about 20 minutes and called her again. She was there and told me that she would speak with the pharmacist to get things figured out.

I went to the pharmacist, who spoke little English, and was unable to explain the situation so she could understand. So she called Dr. D, our team doctor who has been working with me in this whole episode, and he explained it. After that, she was happy to help. Then she had to talk to Customs Woman. After that, she didn’t want to help anymore.

I don’t know what took place in that conversation, but whatever Customs Woman said made the pharmacist back out. I immediately called Customs Woman back, and she just said, “Oh, the pharmacist does not want to help you.”

I called Dr. D, and he had me come up to his office. He wanted to talk to Customs Woman, so I called her again. By the way, every time I called Customs Woman, she gave me a progressively more contemptuous greeting.

Anyways, Dr. D spoke with her and hammered out the tentative solution. My meds will be shipped directly to a pharmacy here in Berlin who will relay the shipment to me. Apparently it’s illegal to ship medicine to an individual in Europe from another country.

Now, all of this progress is necessary and crucial, but I was still sitting here with less than a week’s worth of medicine awaiting an international shipment.

Thanks to some networking back home, the right people in the States got in touch with the German branch of Baxter, which is the company that manufactures my meds.

It just so happened that one of their sales managers was in Berlin for the day. She was able to acquire 5 doses, or 10 days’ worth, of my medicine from their pharmacy here. She was an absolute angel about everything.

For about the first time in handling this situation, someone I was working with (outside of my family) said, “We have to get this medicine to you,” rather than, “How is this going to be paid for?” or “The law says this, so we can’t help you.” (I bet you can’t guess who that last one was…)

So the immediate threat of being without any medication has passed.

Still, we’ve only bought time and still have to get the long-term solution settled. As mentioned above, it appears we have that solution. We will find out for sure over the next several days whether that is the case. Let’s hope so.

In the meantime, I can’t thank everyone back home enough for your prayers, encouragement and creative solutions (thanks, Evan!). From the moment I saw the Baxter Angel in our hotel lobby with my meds, my stress level began dropping. I feel like I could go to bed at 7:00 and sleep all night. I didn’t realize just how great an effect this whole episode has been having on me.

I can breathe again.