get a load of this

[lunabee34]

OMG, y'all. I filled the RX for the eye drops because I've seen real improvement with them (the doc gave me a box of samples). I decided to go to once a day just before bed and am still seeing improvement. Yay!

The doc gave me this card to give the pharmacy to reduce the cost to just 15 dollars for a 90 day supply. Guess how much it would have cost if we'd just bought it? 2000 dollars. 2 fucking thousand dollars. For three months. For eye drops. I told Josh they better be made out of 24 karat gold and the baby Jesus. Sheesh. Since you're supposed to use them twice a day, it'll actually be a 6 month supply rather than 3, but I just cannot fathom why this drug could cost that much.



Suffering Mothers In Mid Victorian Novels by Natalie McKnight

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This relies heavily on psychoanalytic readings of the literature, which I find tedious most of the time. I appreciate this most for its discussion of the biographical details of Bronte, Dickens, Thackeray, and Eliot as well as the information about Queen Victoria's private attitude toward children and mothering. Also contains some interesting info about the medical practices of the time and the self-help for moms books written then.



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The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book is weird. An old woman is ill and seems to be experiencing dementia or memory problems. Her garden starts dying, so with the help of an old toy, the insects invoke the leaf men who come to save the garden. They restore the toy to the lady which seems to heal her and bring her out of her dementia. IDK. Weird.



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A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a cute book. Wonderful illustrations. The kiddo liked it.



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Umbrella by Taro Yashima

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A little girl gets galoshes and an umbrella and can't wait to use them, but the sun just keeps on shining. Very cute.



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Mom and Dad Are Palindromes by Mark Shulman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Super cute. All the background text like store names and street signs are also palindromes.



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The Sweet Smell of Christmas by Patricia M. Scarry

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have such fond memories of reading this book as a kid; this is a 30 year old copy, so the scratch and sniff doesn't work anymore, but I can remember the way the scented pages smelled.



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A Very Fiona Christmas by Richard Cowdrey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Super cute book about Fiona learning that Christmas is about being kind to others. The illustrations are beyond adorable.



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Comments

[cathexys]

Awesome that the eye drops are working esp once a day. As for drug prices...it's not even that i don't understand that new drugs have to pay for their own and future research but what gets me is the freaking randomness...I'd like a drug to cost the same regardless of store, insurance, country...instead it's cheaper for me to buy one of my newer meds in Germany and pay full prie there than have my doc here prescribe them and pay the co-pay!!!

Happy New Year!!!

[lunabee34]

Yes! Or the way one hospital can charge like seven times more for something than a hospital ten miles a way. It makes absolutely no sense.

Happy New Year to you, too!

[kore]

TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS WTF. It's just insane how much prescription drugs cost. Weren't there people buying epipens on the black market for their kids because otherwise one pen was $1K?

[lunabee34]

Yes! And people dying because they were rationing their insulin. It's unconscionable.

[amejisuto]

I'm glad it's helping your eyes, but man! That's expensive! Good for your doctor getting you that help.

[lunabee34]

Oh, I wouldn't have filled the RX at all if it was going to cost that much. Nothing is worth that.

[amejisuto]

I hear that. Its a shame that drug companies do that to people. I wouldn't know what I'd do without my insurance and medicaid.

[lunabee34]

I know. I am so deeply lucky to have good insurance through my employer: medical, dental, and vision. We'd be so lost without it considering how many health problems we have around here.

[timespirt]

Happy New Year hon. "HUGS"

[lunabee34]

Happy New Year to you, too!

[timespirt]

Thank you.

[mordorbot]

I listened to a lot of podcasts about drug prices, and basically the answer is: because they can. That's why monopolies are bad and the government is supposed to break them up. Or cartels or any other kind of price fixing.

Was any of the advice to mothers actually any good, by our modern understanding of parenting?

[lunabee34]

Our system is so freaking broken.

Most of the advice was really terrible and didn't take into account the actual psychology of children. So tantrums or disobedience or misbehavior is always the mom's fault. In fact, everything is always the mom's fault. They pretty much advocated total devotion to family and subsuming themselves entirely in their children.

[mordorbot]

It's not only a problem in America. It's particularly bad in America because the healthcare system is so fragmented that there's no bulk purchasing power to give any ability to negotiate on the other side. But it's a problem in lots of places.

Did women write these books?

[lunabee34]

*nods nods*

Women did almost exclusively write these books. There is a subset of them written by doctors which, of course, were all men. Many of the women who wrote the mothering manuals didn't even have children. Many of the medical treatises on pregnancy and mothering suggested that women were responsible for miscarriages and still births and that when babies or young children died it was inevitably their mom's faults.

[mordorbot]

It's always depressing to see when the only way that a woman can gain power is by reinforcing the patriarchy.

[lunabee34]

Yep. That underlies so much of what's going on in 19th century gender politics.

[mordorbot]

Don't restrict it to the 19th century.

[lunabee34]

True. :/

[executrix]

Can your HR person call the pharmaco and make a deal for your ongoing prescriptions after the card discount wears off? Also, is there another drug that does similar things? Doctors frequently don't know how much things cost, and assume that everyone has 100% coverage so they don't care either.

[lunabee34]

I think I can just get another card from the eye doctor when he writes me a new RX for next year. He definitely knows that this one is primo priced because his assistant straight up told me I wouldn't be able to afford it without the card. I just didn't realize it was *that* unaffordable.