Prairie winters and posting medication

The isolation is its own thing. There is nobody within eighty miles doing this and this circle is my entire peer group.

Somebody in this circle who lives similarly gave me a practical list that saved me about six months of learning it the hard way.

You have described the bit that nobody warns you about.

I keep a written note of what to do if I cannot get somewhere, agreed with my prescriber in advance, and I have used it once.

Something that helped was asking for longer intervals between reviews given the travel, and it was agreed without argument.

I found that being organised was not optional here, whereas in a city I could have improvised.

Something practical: my cool bag lives in the car permanently, because I am never less than an hour from home.

The one thing I would not compromise on is the buffer. Everything else in my arrangement has flexed and that has not.

Four hours to a prescriber each way means an appointment costs me a day, and every arrangement I have made is built around that fact.

Coming back at two years to say the system has held, that the buffer has been used twice, and that the telephone reviews were the thing that made it possible.

Reading this properly rather than skimming, which is all I have to offer today.

Telephone reviews changed my life. I asked for them, they were granted immediately, and I had assumed they were not an option.

What I would say is to build in far more slack than seems necessary. Everything takes longer here and something always goes wrong.

What I got wrong early was assuming I could get something at short notice. I cannot, ever, and planning around that fixed everything.

My bloods are done locally and sent on, which took some arranging and has saved me perhaps eight round trips.

Something practical: I keep a three-week buffer, always, because a ferry cancellation once cost me a fortnight.