It’s spring in Montreal. The trees are blossoming, the bushes are lushly green, and I had to shovel four inches of snow of my car this morning.

It snowed all day yesterday and a good portion of the night. The thumps of snow and slush falling from the tree above our skylight sounded like tennis balls as they hit the glass.

Every road seems to have one good-sized tree branch sprawled across the sidewalk.

But nobody cares, because tonight the hometown Habs stand a good chance if achieving the highly improbable.

I need to reclaim my Google PageRank for “early senility” and today’s activities will help.

In January, I needed to urgently renew my citalopram prescription but my GP was on vacation. I went to an open clinic and spent most of an afternoon waiting to convince a doctor who’d never seen me before to prescribe more for me. I did; luckily it’s not a drug that can be abused.

I noticed last week that the last month of my three monthly allotments (count with me: mid January to mid February to mid March to mid April is three months) was going to need to be replaced so I called my GP to make an appointment. The earliest available time slot was May 18, a good month too late.

The office recommended I come in Monday to see the walk-in physician, so I went there this morning.

After a brief consultation, he gave me a prescription for another month’s worth of pills. The office is right on top of a drug store, so I went to the pharmacist there. The woman serving me created an account for me and upon handing me the bottle of pills asked for $70. I balked. Normally, a month costs me $30. She explained that because I didn’t have my drug insurance info, she’d have to charge me full price but that I could reclaim the non-deductible part later. I declined her offer, hoping to stop off at a pharmacy that had my info on hand already.

I stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home. The woman behind that counter tapped a keyboard and said I still had a refill left on my old prescription. That’s weird, because by our count (you counted with me, right?) I had used up all three months. Whatever. All it meant was that I’d wasted a couple of hours of driving and waiting.

More ominously, she said the provincial drug plan refused my claim. She said she’d call about that while I walked around the store lusting after cheap shirts I don’t need.

I returned and she said my provincial drug insurance (called RAMQ) had been cancelled on April 8. I would have to call to clear it up myself. I refused her kind offer to exchange the drugs for full price and went home.

At home, I found an envelope in the mail. It said that the RAMQ wanted to be reimbursed for a year of claims because we hadn’t replied to a letter I don’t remember seeing.

At that point, it dawned on me that since September, our family’s drug plan was with insurance provided by Concordia and not the RAMQ. I’d never changed the info. I need a plastic card to remind me of that sort of thing. No wonder the RAMQ folks were pissed. I called the insurance, learned that all the claims since September could be sent to them for payment, and then I could reimburse the public RAMQ.

I could even get the new prescription on the private insurance, and I will tomorrow.

That still leaves a half-year of claims the RAMQ should still be paying, but I’m sure that will get straightened out.

My tummy hurts.