It began, as these things so often do, with hope and stationery.

I had, in a fit of grossly unwarranted optimism, imagined that obtaining a repeat prescription for Sodium Cromoglycate – a drug so benign it practically curtsies on the way through the gut – would be a straightforward exercise in modern medicine’s famed “continuity of care.” What followed instead was an administrative farce of such operatic scope that even now I half-expect to find a chorus line of receptionists behind an unnecessarily high counter, jazz-handing a MyMedicare form.

In Which We Begin Sensibly

Like any over-trained Pavlovian pooch, I opened with documentation.

October 13, 8.26 am, I sent Dr Whitmore a detailed pre-appointment letter: current medications, 2022 Blood and allergy results, and a carefully constructed rationale for oral Sodium Cromoglycate (SCG) and some other drug with a ridiculously difficult and forgettable name.

In any sane universe, this would have constituted the foundations of a treatment plan; in ours, it was more of a pre theatre canapé consisting of a shrivelled prune wrapped in deli ham sitting on an asian soup spoon. By 9.45 am I was in the room, mask on, cane in hand, manners intact.

Dr Whitmore confirmed she had read the comprehensive backgrounder and exhibited that she had skimmed it with the dexterity of a wombat. The complex sounding drug was duly e-scripted to my phone - ok thats a start - and I was assured that the SCG capsule script that requires compounding had to be written in ink and physically ferried to City Compounding Care like some sacred parchment.

As I was leaving I mentioned that even though I lived a very short distance from the clinic, my allergies and the less than discreet ghost of medical PTSD hovering in the corner unpredictably prevents me from leaving the house and attending clinics. Telehealth, Dr Whitmore said, would be fine “any time”. I also added that the recent exacerbation of my reactivity to chemical scents and sprays played an increasing part in this. This was our second meeting.

Naturally, I then stepped into the corridor and straight into a miasma of nasally assaulting chemicals that literally leave a bad taste in my mouth until the next day. They have never sprayed air freshener in the ten or so times I have been here before I thought. It must have absolutely nothing to do with me. I forcefully exhaled, held my breath and headed to the front desk.

Eight hours of reaction, even though I had worn a clearly useless mask, because someone felt the corridor needed to smell like “Artificial Meadow of Alpine Air.”

A referral was handed to a receptionist “to fax” – a phrase that really belongs in a museum – and I retreated outside to wheeze in peace while the spray lingered like an accusation. I informed the receptionist that she would be required to bring it out to me due to the chemicals in the clinic. She grimmaced with a micro-expression that said "how dare you inconvenience me that I am forced to go into the fresh air to hand you something".

Telehealth, But Make It Needlessly Dangerous

October 29, I emailed again, this time about excipients in H1 and H2 antihistamines; small, crucial details that determine whether I minimise unduly filling my 'bucket' or audition for a histamine-themed avant-garde rendition of The Phantom.

October 31, I sent a further email requesting that my upcoming appointment be confirmed as Telehealth - I had clicked the wrong appointment type on the app and couldnt' change it. Given the spray incident, you might think this a reasonable ask rather than a radical act of defiance.

November 3 at 8.30 am, I phoned to check. Of course the appointment hadn’t been changed; of course the email request did not count, because this is healthcare, where words only become real once a receptionist has disapproved of them. I was informed – with the fervour of someone quoting scripture – that they do not accept changes to appointments via email. I challenged this and was met with that over-practiced vocalised exasperation of someone who has just returned from some weekend intensive on how to be obstructive without even trying.

By 8.50 am, Dr Whitmore rang, slightly surprised I wasn’t materialising in person like a particularly obedient hologram. The spray incident and the scheduling farce were explained. A form, she said, needed to be signed and it would be better if I could go in today, but tomorrow would be fine.

Like any decent person when met with an urgent request, I agreed, because nothing says “accessible care” like a compulsory exposure test in a hostile built environment. On The next day I went in, masked and wary, and walked straight into the smell of mould in the vestibule emanating from the storage room upstairs (that I had accidently discovered on my first appointment at the clinic - Lots of limbs and headless mannequins scattered among half empty boxes...Mmmm... bleak).

Lucky there wasn't a queue and the receptionist produced what looked like a generic Medicare sign-up form; she said she would fill out my details later, in the soothing tone of someone who has never been given an asthma attack from simply walking through a vestibule. She completely mischaracterised it as resigning up for Medicare, something I thought was not a sign up type of thing. Very complex.

It transpired that this essential excercise, this non-negotiable encounter that had necessitated my exposure to a fungi-enriched atmosphere, concerned a MyMedicare registration — a form easily completed online or via email, thereby transforming a three-minute digital task into a perfect demonstration of how administrative theatre can convert bureaucratic convenience into a respiratory weapon. I paid for this administrative theatre with an asthma attack, emergency oral steroids to prevent going to Emergency and two days in bed.

Progress, In Theory Only

November 20, I wrote again to Dr Whitmore, this time with good news: oral SCG was working, the whatever it was called had proved itself as prophylaxis for allergic asthma, and there was, the beginnings of, a tantalising whiff of efficacy and essentially immediate significant relief.

November 21, I phoned the practice, to ask if Dr Whitmore could authorise the release of my 13 November blood results before Monday’s appointment. Results of a comprehensive 300 Allergen test done in a thoroughly modern way using macro-arrays or some such thing.

You'd think I'd requested a kidney — or perhaps an unscheduled audience with the King, such was the receptionist's response when I telephoned to ask if I might have a brief word with Dr Whitmore. I explained, with what I felt was admirable restraint, that I needed perhaps thirty seconds of her time to clarify her pre-authorising access to my results. Otherwise, she could ask for me when Whipmore comes to grab the next manilla folder or stick a post-it on it.

Thirty seconds. The duration of a mini sneeze episode, the time it takes to dial a fax number, a commercial break in the attention economy. But what followed was a needlessly protracted exchange in which my modest request was subjected to the kind of scrutiny typically reserved for asylum applications or parole hearings. The receptionist's tone shifted through several registers of administrative disapproval before arriving at her final declaration: I had, she announced with the satisfied authority of someone citing established case law, "no right" to take up Dr Whitmore's time, as booked appointments took priority. The irony that this explanation had itself consumed several minutes — far exceeding my requested thirty seconds — appeared to escape her notice entirely.

Eventually, I was told that Dr Swashbuckle could call “around 2 pm.” An hour later this was confirmed; the call actually came at about 2.45 pm, at which point we went through the significant results and I was sent a summary by email. The subtext was clear: clinical complexity is acceptable, but logistical efficiency is an outrageous over-reach. Getting my blood results - not for a terminal disease diagnosis - but for something I have lived with as long as my blood? - No. "You will have to wait".

November 24, 12.45 pm, I had a further Telehealth appointment with Dr Whitmore. We discussed the success of oral SCG and I requested a repeat prescription, with further repeats, to be sent to City Compounding Care.

She agreed to take the SCG repeats in to the pharmacy; she had done this before so I trusted her to be capable, but for reasons known only to the gods of legacy prescribing, an electronic script for Rynacrom nasal spray – a product long discontinued – appeared on my phone. Thrown in as an oblique compounding prompt?

Chemistry, But Make It Wrong

25 November, I emailed City Compounding Care with a simple query: what excipients were in the capsules and the nasal spray? I was after a few days informed that the spray contained excipients that destabalise the cells the drug is actually meant to be treating. I replied requesting SCG capsules and, if feasible, a saline only nasal formulation, given that SCG is highly water-soluble and nobody was trying to dissolve the Ark of the Covenant. Bess replied that the spray must contain alcohol to make it disolve, which is scientifically incorrect, but entirely on-brand for the broader theme of confident wrongness.

1 December, chipping but not yet cracked, I wrote to Bess again saying: leave the nasal spray, just make up the SCG capsules and email when ready. the next day, Bess replied asking if the repeat script was available to be sent in. I responded as soon as I saw the email: Dr Whitmore had said she would take in the physical script.

All she had done, was been unable to navigate the adjoining door to the chemist. I asked Bess to follow up. Bess did not follow up.

At this point, the entire process resembled some extravagently followed wellness guru refusing to share their ring light settings while insisting they were deeply committed to authenticity and transparency.

3 December, I booked the next available appointment with Dr Whitmore for 4 December at 10 am.

Best Practice, Worst Execution

December 4, 10.00 am, I had another Telehealth appointment booked with Dr Whitmore; she called early. I went back over the sequence: the October agreement, the promise to take a script to the pharmacy, the written documentation of the 100 mg SCG capsules threaded through every letter. She listened, then said there was “no record” of any SCG capsule prescription in the system – nothing at all to show that SCG had ever been prescribed or arranged. On paper, it was as if the decision had never existed. Lucky I have it recorded.

She then offered 20 mg inhaler spincaps as “best practice”, an obsolete formulation held up as the reasonable option in place of the 100 mg compounded capsules that were actually working and had sent her three letters about. I held the line and repeated that I needed the 100 mg compounded capsules already trialled and agreed. Eventually, she conceded, said she would write a physical script for the 100 mg capsules, and asked the front desk to email it to me.

More gatekeeping nonsense dressed up as 'clinical prudence'.

An hour later, the receptionist rang to say she could not, in fact, email the prescription, but could post it or have it collected. I opted to collect it within half an hour, because I had learned my lesson about entrusting timelines to this particular organism. I would call on approach and ask someone to bring it out for me. On approach I whipped out my randomly unpredictable phone but the call would not connect. Haha. I didn't try again and decided to steel myself by holding my breath for the trip through the vestibule.

I collected the script, neatly wrapped inside a pathology request form – origami it was not – and took it straight to the chemist next door. The pharmacist looked at it and announced that the back page was missing. She obligingly said she would take care of it, slipped through the once secret door into the clinic, and eventually re-emerged with the missing page and we silently agreed not to clap.

Had the script been posted to me or another compounding pharmacy, this tiny, critical omission would have bloomed into yet another chapter in the epic of avoidable delay.

The Punchline - The Collection.

In the three weeks since the original arrangement, the price had risen by 20 dollars. A nifty little premium for a grand apparatus devoted to the artful squandering of time, the erasure of promises, and the casual mutilation of reality in the name of procedure. All for $20 Dollars? Cheap! Existential degradation at scale, respiratory mayhem, and a gold standard masterclass in bureaucratic self‑exposure all for the price of a slightly fancier Combo Meal. What I had never articulated verbally was that I hadn't started the original single prescription course when I had it filled, I was assessing another medication in isolation to be able to fully gauge its effects. Had I started when the script was filled the three week process would have meant I would have run out just after this whole schemozzle started. That was fortunate.

All of this – the maze of emails and calls, the mouldy vestibule pilgrimage, the Telehealth that required in-person exposure, the phantom script, the missing back page, the discontinued “best practice” alternative – unfolded simply for the provision of a medication that has significantly reduced my allergy load and a baroque allergic profile that would make any immunologist reach for a strong chamomile.

This is what is called a repeat.