As most of you know that read my blog, I suffer from MS (Multiple Sclerosis). I was diagnosed almost 14 years ago and since that time, my symptoms have become progressively worse. Fortunate for me, I have the most common form of MS, Relapsing/Remitting, which means that the disease can resurface and I have a bout with it, and then it can go into remission for weeks, months, even years.
For the past two years I have been going to my neurologist about every three months for injections of COPAXONE® . This drug has done wonders with me and the lesions have stopped spreading. But he feels it is time to become more aggressive with this treatment and has suggested self injections. The doses would be smaller, but I could take them more frequently and studies have shown that people that have been using this have had remarkable results.
I am all about wanting to feel good, and try and live a more normal life with this disease, but shooting up?! I'm not too sure about that. I mean I hate needles and the thought that I would inject myself every week or so just gives me the willies. I mean when I go every quarter for my doctor to inject me, I become nervous and break out into a cold sweat when he comes towards me with that foot long needle. All I want to do is jump off that table and run to my mommy. And then he injects it near my spine for rapid effect. Then I have to lay flat of my back for a good 40 minutes to make sure it is effective. And I don't even get a lollipop afterwards!
There would be no way I could do that at home! Or even if I let DJ inject me, I'd be freaking out.
The doctor wants me to think about this, for a couple of reasons, one it is more aggressive, and the more aggressive we can be with treatment the less episodes I could have to deal with and secondly, a visit to the doctor every time I need one of these injections could become quite costly, as we live in America where health care cost is the highest in the world. One injection at his office can be as much as $1300.00. And of course I do not have anycompanyy provided health coverage. So here I am. You'd think it would be a simple choice. Just do the home injections and get over it. Well I'm not quite that simple. I still have some of that "Drama Queen" attitude going on in my head, especially about shooting a needle into my body.
I think I need to think on this a little bit longer.
1 comment:
Am I understanding you only get injections once a month? I am on Copaxone and have been for 2 years and I inject daily. It's not bad. I use an auto-injector and it does all the work for me. I really like Copaxone even though it's injected daily because I have no side affects from it like I did on Betaseron.
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