Little Changes, New MS Friends and a Big Leap - Part One

This post is part of a three or four post installment... (added note I have turned comments on for registered users)

For those of you new to my tale, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis Feb 18th, 2014 and confirmed to have multiple plaques and active disease on Feb 26th.  Here is what I have been up to for the last week or so since my last post.  

I know I told you last week I decided on an MS drug treatment so let me tell you about the meds and my adventure to receive them. It is called Rebif and it has been on the market since 1996, and was one of the only drug company's to do a head to head study with another injectable MS drug.  It gets pretty solid results so with that I decided to go for it.   

The prescription was submitted to Hy-Vee and the drug company on a Friday and didn't get submitted to my insurance until Monday.  I got a call that day from both MS Lifeline (the drug company people) and the Hy-Vee specialty pharmacy in Omaha that will be sending me my meds.  I didn't call the Hy-Vee folks back as they said they submitted to my insurance and it would take a few days to go through the preapproval process.  I did call the MS Lifeline people back and talked to Sean (a sign maybe) and he told me about their sharps recycling program (they make the plastics and needles into concrete), the travel pack (a small cooler with two solid ice packs to travel with my meds) and the sharps box which would both be coming later that week.  

I felt marginally better after talking to him but was still struggling with my decision to go the injection route when there are three perfectly good pill options on the market.  The travel kit arrived on Wed and I have to say by then I was having serious second thoughts about going the injection route.  I was really angry at that box and opened it and literally kicked it into a corner.   I wasn't any happier on Friday when the sharps container and return shipping package showed up.  I will tell you more in a later post how I got past this little issue.  

On Thursday I talked to the Hy-Vee lady, and was informed my insurance did cover the script when they submitted it and that I have a $15 copay which isn't bad for a drug that costs several thousand dollars a month.  Here is the bonus, the drug company has a program to actually pay the $15 copay for me but she has to submit that to them and was waiting until Monday the 10th to see if they were covering that for me.  I got a call Monday and asked her to ship it right over so I had a big box with a foam cooler and a month of meds on ice on my porch today. 

I am supposed to inject myself three times a week and have decided to do Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday nights.  Tonight is Tuesday so it is time for the big leap... I have a month full of injector pens in a box in the fridge ready for me.  They do what is called a tritration where for two weeks I take a 1/4 of my final dosage.  Then for two weeks I take 1/2 of my final dosage and on week five I go all in.  

I have set my calendar for a year of reminders as it is important to take the meds at the same time on the same days no matter what timezone.  And tonight around 8:30 I will pulled one out to warm to room temp, took an Aleve.  I had everything the directions said I needed (as I still have not heard from the MS Lifelines nurse and no more waiting) so two cotton swabs, rubbing alcohol, an injector pin (which proved highly engineered and took me a minute to figure out), an ice pack and a hovering husband later I was ready to go.

The injection was pretty simple, no burn (keeping in mind this is 1/4 of what I will be taking) and an ice pack later I feel pretty good about this as a "for now, to get me started" option.  I slept good, woke up normal (new normal that is) and the only thing that might be a minor side effect is burning thigh muscles today (but I did swum yesterday and do yoga the day before).  

My afterthought this morning is that I need to visualize the liquid in the injection as being healing liquid going into my brain and spine to heal the damage that is done and still being done by the disease.  I need to train my mind to heal me just like the meds.  Until next time when I share about my new MS friends, new healthier eating, etc.  Thanks for reading.