Janel Wright had just days left in her insulin supply in early January when a pharmacist told her there was none of the drug left to fill her prescription.
Her neighborhood Fred Meyer pharmacy in Anchorage, Alaska hadn’t called in weeks to offer an automatic refill, and Wright’s supply of NovoLog insulin had dwindled to nearly nothing. The 62-year-old administrative law judge has Type 1 diabetes and needs the medication to live.
The pharmacist told Wright the pharmacy had tried unsuccessfully to get a wholesaler to ship them new insulin, so she had two remaining options. She could drive to a town 90 minutes away where another Fred Meyer had two vials in stock or call other pharmacies to see what she could drum up.
“I’m desperate. I need my insulin, and I need it within two days,” Wright, recalled thinking. She was almost out. That January encounter was the first time she’d come so dangerously close to running out of the medication she had used since she was a child.
“I started crying – and it takes a lot to make me cry,” she said.