I spent the last week working to renew my USDA APHIS permit to import "animal parts." My husband is one of the roughly 5% of diabetics who cannot tolerate fast-acting insulin, and ALL the various forms of artificial insulin are fast-acting, because that's the norm. The pharmas continue to invest in making "designer" insulins but flat refuse to make one kind of slower insulin for those who really need it. You cannot buy slow NPH animal insulin in the US: it's an "illegal" drug, so I've imported it, first from England (where it's made from pig pancreases) and later from the English pharama's Canadian branch. This means that I ONLY need nine separate documents to import porcine insulin, the USDA permit being the most difficult to renew.
Tuesday I started trying to call. By Wednesday I had found a more direct number and started to leave messages. Ditto Thursday. I decided it might work better to call when they open, which is 6:00 a.m. here, so tried that Friday and, for the first time, got an actual human to answer!!! She transferred me to the doc who had spent almost a year-and-a-half designing the wonderful new efile form; it only took the doc over two hours to walk me through the form, which features drop-down menus for states and Canadian provinces that only drop down partway through the list AND don't allow you to simply type in the state or province. He advised me to select "Alabama" for my state and "Alberta" for the province from which the insulin will come, promising to change them to Oregon and Ontario. The country of origin (the drop-down list is many pages) has to be scrolled through to get to "United Kingdom," but then a new wrinkle appeared: it is impossible to actually click on it after finally getting to the very end of the list! Another fix by the designer. Some of the questions were vague, impossible to know exactly what was wanted. Finally got the application completed and accepted, was told it will take two weeks to process (by which time he'll run out of insulin that's safe for him to use). Whew!

Then, a few minutes later, someone returned one of the calls I'd left earlier that week...so they don't just discard them at the end of every day as I had suspected! Better yet, the vet who works with people trying to import animal insulin called. When I mentioned the name of the doc who had assisted me in completing the form, she broke into gales of laughter: seems that, despite the 16 months he's spent on developing this form, it has caused many problems for the people trying to help those applying...and all the permits expired this year so that all of us would get a chance to use the swell new form! She's frustrated because she's the one who helps people desperate to get the damned permit so that they can order insulin! She gave me her direct phone number and e-mail address so that the next permit renewal should be much easier. Good news is that this permit will last for five years; bad news is that I'll need to log in every couple of months to avoid having my password expire, which would prevent me from simply renewing the permit when this new one times out. AARGH! Best of all, she had fast-tracked the permit and sent it to me right then...no two week wait!
So, I finally was able to place the actual order and confirm that it had arrived, all nine forms present. We can hardly wait to have the Canadian affiliate call to ask to charge the thousand-buck order to our debit card! We should have a 3' square box (that insulates and protects the 10 tiny vials) arrives via Fed Ex Air week after next! So, it was the usual long, frustrating process of preparing to order, but with a good chuckle toward the end of getting the USDA permit. All the requirements are pretty insane, considering that you can buy artificial insulin in the US without even a prescription! The requirements are intended to discourage anyone from buying drugs outside the US, to protect the very US pharmas that refuse to make a single slower insulin that the 5% of diabetics could use safely. I always feel that their attitude is, "it's only 5%...let 'em die!" I can assure you that when a person's blood sugar drops below 25, they quit breathing. I don't really want to see that ever again. <g> All I need to do now is to remember to go to the USDA EPermits page every couple of months AND to renew his passport before it expires in 2026.