NEW YEAR, NEW DRUG

I had my appointment with the rheumatologist and she agreed that Humira was definitely not working for me. Not completely unusual, sometimes a person might have to try 2 or 3 drugs before finding one that "clicks" for them. So she recommended I switch to Enbrel, to which I readily agreed.

It's funny, when she originally put me on Humira, she thought my insurance company would reject that and try to put me on Enbrel instead since it was slightly cheaper. Well, when she tried to get me onto Enbrel they rejected it! Fucking insurance companies. Seriously a worthless, needless, profit sucking extra layer of bureaucracy. ANYWAYS, they want me on Simponi first instead. Fine, whatever.

According to the doctor, these are all pretty much the same thing. Humira, Enbrel, Simponi... it's whatever. There's no way to tell which is going to work for one person and not work for another. If for whatever reason Enbrel didn't work, we would have tried Simponi next anyways. If for whatever reason Simponi doesn't work for me, then we should be able to get coverage on the Enbrel.

Simponi is an auto-injector pen just like Humira but the injection is only once a month. So maybe that will be a good thing. Less shots, although I don't really mind them. If I do end up doing Enbrel, that is once a week. I don't really care as long as long as it fricking works!

I did my first injection of Simponi last night and it was pretty unremarkable. I did "feel" this shot more than Humira though. Not sure if it has a bigger needle or the medicine just burns more for whatever reason, but it was definitely more noticeable than the Humira injection. Still though, in the grand scheme of shots, very minor and almost painless. And I'm done until March 25th! So that's good. Although, the numbers person in me wants clarity on this "once a month" thing. Because months have different days. Is it every four weeks? Or sometimes it is just 31 days between shots and other times it is 28?

So yeah! Like all of these drugs, it can take a couple of months before it really kicks in. Which kind of blows, because I've already felt like crap for a couple months. Silver lining though, if there was anytime in the recent history of the world to feel so crappy you just want to lay around in your house, it is right now.