Just ask your doctor

I don’t know about you, but one of my very favorite things in the world to do is watch drug commercials. The pharmaceutical company gives you a fabulous thirty second pitch on how great this new medication is and how your quality of life will be so fantastically improved if you start taking it right away. Just look at all the healthy looking smiling folks running around outside on the beach or in the park beneath the happy summer sunshine! Holding hands and gazing at each other flirtatiously. Throwing the ball around with the grandkids and riding bikes along the lakeside. Ah…life would be so lovely if only you took these new pills we have for you!

Then comes the very best part, the five minutes of legally required listings of side effects! The shiny happy folks haven’t stopped playing Frisbee on the screen, and the music still makes you want to get up and dance of course. The announcer doesn’t even change the smile in his voice when he begins to tell you how one of the side effects of your new Gout medication is…wait for it…Gout flare ups! Want to get rid of your shingles? Here’s some cancer instead! What, you don’t like your COPD? Let’s see what’s in the grab bag for ya…take this heart attack! We’ll see your erectile dysfunction and raise you a low blood pressure attack followed by seizures and some death!

If you have followed this blog at all, you might remember that I am the side effect king. If there is a side effect listed in the warning packet for a medication, no matter how rare it may be, I get it. All of my doctors are of course baffled by this and swear that it won’t happen with this new drug they want to put me on. Inevitably of course, it does happen and I end up with a fun filled visit to the local E.R. again. I know most of the nurses on a first name basis these days. I’m such a frequent visitor that they even invited me to the staff holiday party last year. The bean dip was spectacular!

I made it through close to a year on my last meds before it happened. So that was pretty good I guess. We thought we were in the clear and I actually stopped worrying about it for a while there. Oh well, here we go again.

I received a lovely package in the mail yesterday from the manufacturers of the new stuff my neurologist wants me to start taking. It was a lovely bag and blanket set with bright yellow and orange colored flowers. The joyful faceless cartoon woman throughout the included booklet is holding her proud and defiant fist up to the sky in front of a vibrant and excited sun. She is wearing her workout tank top and sweatpants apparently out for her daily run. On page five she is stretching out the kinks in a relaxing yoga pose. A few pages later she has her arms folded in a cocky and defiant position of power. Finally on the last page of the pamphlet she is striding briskly along the shoreline of some wonderful Oceanside holding hands with her little boy. It’s just so damn inspirational! Let’s do some jumping jacks! Who’s with me?

Since more than twice the amount of women get M.S. than men I probably shouldn’t be offended that they didn’t send me the football and wrestling package. But what can I say? I really don’t think that a camouflage transfusion blanket and pictures of sports cars would make me feel too much better at this point anyway. Besides, I’m comfortable enough in my sexuality to wear a pink blankey.

Here’s what we have all been waiting for anyway, my three favorite pages in the booklet. I’m sure the lawyers had an awesome time trying to figure out ways to list this stuff without sounding too much like Bela Lugosi. Here is the list from page nine of the allergic reactions that can be associated with this new treatment:

• Hives
• Itching
• Trouble breathing
• Chest pain
• Dizziness
• Wheezing
• Chills
• Rash
• Nausea
• Flushing of skin
• Low blood pressure

Sound like fun to you? Sign me up!

Page eleven shows the most common side effects:

• Headache
• Urinary tract infection
• Lung infection
• Pain in arms and legs
• Vaginitis
• Nose and throat infections
• Feeling tired
• Joint pain
• Depression
• Diarrhea
• Rash
• Stomach area pain

I’m not really sure about you guys, but I’m personally really excited by the possibility of getting Vaginitis! That would just be awesome for me. Since one of my main problems with M.S. has been the pain in my arms and legs, I get to look forward to more of that? AWESOME! And if I haven’t been depressed already, please give me all this crap along with my degenerative disease. That shouldn’t cause more depression at all. Great part is that I’ll get to start taking anti-depressants which will bring even more side effects! Say it with me now…AWESOME!!!

The side effect listed on page four really takes the cake though.

• Treatment increases a patient’s chance of getting PML, a rare brain infection that usually causes death or severe disability. If PML happens, it usually happens in people with weakened immune systems.

Ok, so the drug manufacturers in all of their wisdom, to treat people with a degenerative disease that causes your immune system to weaken, create a medicine that can cause death or severe disability in people with weakened immune systems. Ummm… Hello? McFly!

Am I freaking out? Yup. Do I want to start this medication? Not really. But unfortunately it’s the best that modern medicine has to offer today. Apparently there are close to 70,000 people in the world taking this particular course of treatment today and there are only 70 recorded cases of PML attributed to it. I’ve done the research. I just don’t want to be #71.

I’ve been wracking my brain for hours now trying to find some light hearted and funny way to end this rant. Unfortunately nothing comes to mind that isn’t even more dark and cynical. I would love to make more light of this predicament I am in, but I just can’t right now. Truthfully I am terrified. The old saying that the cure is sometimes worse than the disease rolls through my head quite often these days. But that’s just the way medicine progresses.

A hundred years ago I would have been a condemned man with no treatment and no hope at all. Because of the scientists and doctors out there developing these new treatments those of us with M.S. at least have a shot. A fighting shot at that. Sure there a tons of unwanted side effects and there isn’t always a complete cure for everything. But it’s a process. And I for one am grateful that there are people out there trying to find ways to make healthy lives possible for all of us.

Cross your fingers, but don’t hold your breath!

(Stole the new photo from a friend. Works pretty good dontcha think? I wish they really made it! Wonder what the side effects would be though...)

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