New Year, New DR, New Insurance

It's a new year. I'm excited for the many prospects of it. Kortnie's doctor retired as of Dec 1. I'm pretty excited about it because now I can go ahead and get her a new Doctor. The Dr that retired is the only Pediatric Endocrinologist up here where we live. So now we've found a new Dr in Scottsdale, AZ which is about a 231 mile drive for us. I wasn't a big fan of the old Dr, but he was only 31 miles away and I also kind of worry about having a Dr further away during an emergency. Anyways, this new Dr works in an Endocrinology Center and we're just excited for a new path. His name is Dr Hahnke. Our first appointment is on January 13, it happens to be MLK day and the kids are out of school. My husband is taking off of work and we're all going to go down together. We'll see the Dr, eat at Olive Garden, do some shopping at Sam's Club and then the girls want to go to the mall and spend some of their Christmas money. We are hopefully going to make a fun trip out of it.

Some of the questions I have for this new Dr are...

1. How to really work on her A1C, it's been high in the high 7's and lower 8's since diagnosis.

2. She's had T1D for a little over 2 years now and we've never had any blood work run except for the A1C every 3 months. She should have yearly blood work right?

3. I need to get our prescriptions renewed too. We also have new insurance which started on Dec 1. And the new insurance BCBS the preferred (cheaper) test strips happen to be One Touch which is awesome because they are the kind that link up best with her pump, we can use them in the pump's meter remote. (We're on the Animas Ping) The insurance will let us get 300 a month for a copay of $15. When we were on Medicaid we were allowed 150 AccuCheck's per month for no copay, and then we lost Medicaid on Jan 1, 2011 and I was having to pay full price for test strips, so I resorted to buying them off of ebay. Most of the time the AccuCheck's were the best deal I could get on ebay. I'm excited to be able to use the One Touch's now! Yay! Also, the old Dr only wanted to prescribe 1 bottle of insulin per month to Kortnie and I really think she needs 2, that way I won't have to really try to streth it out, at the end of the month I find myself starting to worry that we'll run out. I was paying $136/month for a bottle of insulin, so I didn't really push to get 2 bottles, that would have doubled our price, but now with the new insurance I an get the 2 bottles for $15 copay each month. Also with the new insurance we'll have to use Liberty Medical for the pump supplies. So I need the new Dr to write new prescriptions for the pump supplies. We did have a lifetime prescription for the pump supplies of at Animas, but now everything is switched up. We do have a $1000 deductible on the pump supplies, after that BCBS will cover 70% of the cost. Again this past year we were paying full price, so I'm excited to get past that $1000 deductible and get the costs of those down.

4. This Dr can do the A1C test with a finger poke in the office, he also does a 3 day CGM, which I am going to ask about.

5. We currently do not have a 504 plan at Kortnie's school. The school however does have a medical agreement type thing with our family. Kortnie's in 2nd grade now and going to 3rd grade next year. However when she goes to 4th grade she will be in a new school with new staff. So my goal is to have her able to do a lot of her diabetes care by the time she goes to the new school which will be Fall of 2013, I will also insist on a 504 plan when she goes to the new school. So I plan on visiting with Dr Hahnke about some of that.

6. I think I'd also like to talk to him about us trying Apidra, possibly over Spring Break when she's out of school for a week, in March. I do need to check with our insurance and see if there would be a cost difference for Apidra though.

7. Kortnie will only do her site in her belly, I want to talk to him about talking to her about other sites and why she should move it around more often.

So, do any of you have any other questions you think I should ask, something, I'm not thinking about? I'm sure I'll come up with a few more between now and then. I really need to start writing these questions down.

This year, I am going to be pro-active, I'm going to start keeping better track of her numbers, basal changes, carb counts, I'm going to really start weighing and measuring and not guessing quite as much. I thought we had a handle on things and we're doing okay, but I want to do better! I also want to work on my fear of letting Kortnie have more independance. She wants to go and do and she doesn't want me hovering. I also need to get out more by myself or with Brian without having to rush back and check on Kortnie or without having to call her every hour or two.

I also am going to work on me this year, I am overweight and tired. I am going to start really working on making healthier choices when shopping, cooking, and eating. Not just for me, but for all of us. I also want to excerise more often. 4 days of 7. I want to spend more time on me, making myself feel good, I want to get dressed and make myself look nice more often. I want to work on getting some of our debt paid off too. I know we aren't going to get on top of it this year, but I want to work on getting it a lot more under control. I also want to blog more often :-) It's a lot, I know, but I'm willing to start chipping away at it.
Happy New Year everyone, what are some of your goals you want to work on? D or not?