July 2023

My husband knew his body.

When he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in his 40s, despite the fact that he was a dedicated runner, every physician he ever saw recommended that he take some blood-thinner or other. Each of them gave as their rationale the fact that he had a five-percent chance of experiencing a stroke without such medication.

Two dreaded words for medical providers and patients: Prior Authorization (PA). For the fortunate few who have not needed to engage in this process, here’s a definition from the American Medical Association website: Prior authorization is a health plan cost-control process by which health care providers must obtain advance approval from a health plan before a specific service is delivered to the patient to qualify for payment coverage.

I’ll be the first to admit that I only know a fraction of all there is to know about the wide variety of tablets, capsules, caplets, and other pills out there.

He said he wanted to talk to me. He asked for me by name. He was seated in the waiting room, a lone pale face in a room full of brown faces. I asked my medical assistant to query him as to why he was there, while I continued to see patients; he told her he had something to give me—something he could give only to me.