The return to our home in Vermont, from MN, hasn’t been too easy or too hard–we are managing and making progress.  However, attempting to transfer care from the Minneapolis VA to White River Junction/Burlington Clinic continues to be a miserable experience. Therefore the recent cheery emails “After you enroll, you can immediately start receiving your health care at a VA facility, or at a later date – the choice is yours,” are particularly irksome and even downright scary with their false promises.

The Minneapolis VA is far from perfect but it is superior to White River.  Our most serious current problem concerns  getting my old Marine’s critical maintenance medications–even after one PCP appointment, labs, and the “seamless” electronic records.  The first month, the Minneapolis pharmacy mailed his meds to Vermont.  Then White River filled the second month.  Now, month three, the retiring PCP, arbitrarily fills some meds but not others.  No calls are returned by anyone at the VA, pleas for help via “Secure Messages” are ignored, so we have resorted to requesting the Minneapolis VA Pharmacy to refill meds online.  That will only work for meds with refills remaining in the MN VA system, if at all.

VA to VT vets: When you’re in, you’re in. Image: Wikipedia

But then there was the (soon-retiring, thank God) doc’s remarkable comments about hepatitis transmission:  you can get hepatitis from a toilet seat but not a jet injector!

Alarmingly, she was unable to find any lab results from any previous VA HCV tests so ordered new one(s).  A letter came in the mail stating that the test was positive for HCV.  (Shock. Fear.  Not the dragon again.) But she didn’t indicate which test was performed, the HCV antigen Ab test or HCV RNA test, so I tried to calm myself with the idea it was most likely the antigen test.  It was, but she never bothered to follow up when a later RNA test showed, “not detected.” Checking the updating Blue Button information supplied that answer. (Whew…)

The list of unpleasant issues we are encountering with the VT VA is growing longer by the week and this seems like the perfect forum to vent.  Thanks for your patience in advance because there are more complaints to come!