God Still Watches Out For Us

When God's children face trials and the petty harassments of the Prince of this world, he looks on approvingly. He absolutely hates God's children. CS Lewis captured that in Screwtape Letters where he showed the devils hatred for any bit of pleasure or comfort we draw from life - be it a good meal or a hot shower.

Today I witnessed just this sort of petty demonic harassment as the devil threw everything but the kitchen sink at us in an attempt to ruin a lovely and special opportunity we had to experience a once in a lifetime joy. It is our 50th wedding anniversary and my daughter and son-in-law paid for a cruise to Alaska with them and they are bringing the grandson along to play with Grammy and Poppy. We are so looking forward to the trip. The last days before the trip, however, the demons attacked us to try and destroy even this happiness for us. 

We leave tomorrow, on Monday.  A week ago I contacted my HMO about getting Sheila's most critical medication sent early so she wouldn't run out during the week. The pharmacy said they'd handle it. Having that med is serious. To run out of that medicine in the middle of the trip would have resulted in panic attacks, seizures, and possible hospitalization at sea. We leave on the 20th, but her schedule 4 medication would not be released until the 23rd. The doctor has to approve early release. She was going to run out and she can't do that.  I checked to make sure the medication had been shipped Friday afternoon and to my shock, it had not even been approved. Someone in the system dropped the ball and failed to forward the request to release her meds early in time for the trip.

The next morning I got on the phone to find out what happened and to try and get her medicine released. That's when I began to hit brick wall after brick wall. The upshot was that the consulting nurse said it couldn't be done. So did the customer service lady, the chat utility person and the nurse at the one clinic that was actually open on the weekend. They told me we couldn't even get help at the emergency room because of this new federal law restricting schedule 4 meds. I finally arranged a video chat with the HMO's on duty emergency tele-medicine doctor and after explaining the situation he put me on hold and when he came back sometime later, he told me that the med had been approved and was being filled, but that the note requesting "early release for travel" had inexplicably been left off. He talked to the pharmacy for us but couldn't prescribe that med himself because of a new federal law that makes schedule 4 meds much harder to prescribe and get delivered. Dr. D. finally said we could go pick it up, but we'd have to go to the Tacoma HMO pharmacy nearly 30 miles away. He was right about that. He was wrong about us being able to "pick it up."

The 30 miles presented another problem as we no longer have a car, are on a very fixed income, are both disabled and public transportation to a whole other city is really problematic on weekends. It takes 3 days just to get a paratransit bus to the bus stop. And her psychiatrist's office is closed on the weekend and apparently they don't have on-call docs in an emergency for psychiatrists.

I'm going a bit off my story here. It seems the feds are okay with legalizing marijuana, opening borders for the drug mules, and even allowing some pharmacies to carry over-the-counter morphine. But my wife's prescribed by a doctor anti-anxiety medication requires practically an act of congress to get a few days early so we can celebrate our 50th anniversary. (end of rant)

Our neighbor, Dan, a wonderful human being, when I asked if he could drive us down to the bus stop, immediately left his supper and said he was going to take us all the way to the Tacoma clinic. God bless that man for his kindness. When we got to the clinic, we hit road blocks again and again. The pharmacy wouldn't release the medication to us. so we had to go to the urgent care clinic there and wait an hour or so to see a doctor. All the nurses and receptionists at the urgent care told us they weren't going to be able to release her meds. One even chided us for not planning our trip properly.  

What she meant by planning our trip better was to go through all 15 medications and determine when each ran out and then plan our cruise for the window in the dates when nothing was going to run out. There was no sense from these unpleasant women that the HMO should adapt to our schedule and maybe give us the extra we needed to last the length of the cruise. They seemed oblivious to the fact that the cruise lines' sailing dates are planned more than a year ahead and that the ships are highly unlikely to move around their embarkation dates based on 6000 passengers' medication refill schedules. I'm afraid I lost my temper a bit and threatened to sue somebody.

I went back to the exam room and found poor Sheila prepared to just stay home and send me on the cruise without her. It seemed pretty hopeless. So we did what we always do when things seem  hopeless. We prayed and asked God to help us, for without God's intervention, it looked very much like Sheila wasn't going to be able to go on our 50th anniversary cruise. Her most critical medication would run out 2 days into the trip and our HMO was adamantly denying our request to get the refills before we leave Monday. Without that med her life would be placed at risk on a boat out at sea. It looked very like she was going to have to stay behind while our family went on our 50th anniversary cruise without her and I wasn't going without her so everyone on the cruise would be celebrating our anniversary without us. I wasn't going to let that happen, so I kept fighting to get her meds, taking on every naysayer who popped up to tell us it wasn't going to happen.

After we prayed in the urgent care examination room, a young doctor came in a short time later. Although every HMO staff member had told us no way were we getting her medicine, the doc took pity on us. Turns out he kind of stuck his neck out to get her meds covered for the trip. If her psychiatrist didn't back his play, he could have been in real trouble for what he did. He ordered enough of her meds to get us through the trip and home. It took some doing, but this kind man got it done. God bless him.

What Satan means for evil, God works out for good. The devil works in broad strokes to corrupt our culture, our political system and our religions, but as time grows shorter, he grows desperate and is reduced to turning the forces evil loose in ever more petty attempts to harass good people. Petty demons try hard to spoil any good and worthy thing; every bit of joy we may have if they can. 

So, we had a little miracle yesterday. Today we're packing for the boat. Tomorrow we leave at 7 am for the Royal Caribbean Cruise Terminal, an hour away in Seattle. We've never been on a cruise before. We've never been to Alaska or Canada. We've never seen the northern lights, glaciers, whales or brown bears. And we get to travel all that way in comfort, even though our knees and hips are wrecked, our mobility is limited, and we live on a fixed income. Our children are good to us, our neighbors are good to us and God especially is good to us. I've got a great pair of binoculars and my grandson and I are looking forward to watching whales from the balcony of our cabin and Sheila and I to spending time with our kids who live 3000 miles away. Sabbath we will spend at sea in the midst of God's natural beauty. Even as the world winds down, our loving Savior is there for us to give us joy and encouragement amidst the storms of life.

God is so very good.

© 2024 by Tom King