So, over the last two days, I’ve had the two specialist appointments that I had been waiting months for. I won’t go into too many details, but things didn’t go quite as planned. I won’t say that it was necessarily a bad result overall, but it certainly wasn’t what I had expected.
The first specialist was the one I was seeing about the possibility of Ketamine infusions. Within the first five minutes, that was off the cards. It turns out that this particular treatment isn’t available via public health care here. The rest of the appointment followed along the lines of what we could do about changing medications to help with my pain, explaining a few things about fibro and CFS and, of course, confirming that I had both of those and adding a new diagnosis of IBS to the list.
Day two resulted in a script for Lyrica, a plan to be weaned off my dose of Duloxetine and generally a change over of things.
Today was a regular GP appointment to follow up on the specialists and also get some results. It turns out that, despite the constant swelling and bruising and whatnot, my toe isn’t broken. That’s pretty interesting. My bloods show that I am allergic to ALL THE THINGS!, specifically grass, fur of all my favourite animals and any kind of mites and dust. That basically sums up everything I am around, ever. So there’s that. Also got my script for Lyrica filled out and, thanks to the bell-ends running this country, my script isn’t classed as ‘necessary’ under our healthcare and I can’t get a generic form of it. So, I’m looking at $70 a month on top of the $108 a month I need for my private helathcare (that I had to sign up for last night) that I can’t use for another week. Oh, and because of my pre-existing illnesses, none of this will be covered for 12 months, anyway. So I have to give these guys almost a grand and a half before I throw more money at them for my healthcare. I’m not terribly impressed by the entire ordeal, but what can you do? I mean, my options are stick with what I have, be miserably sick and make no process, or beggar myself and have a chance at living some kind of normal and relatively pain-stable life. Of course, we won’t know this until I’ve been on the Lyrica for a while and we’ve tweaked it with other meds, but that’s the gamble you have to make with these things.
So, tonight I take Lyrica for the first time. I’m sore thanks to a weather change, exhausted from all the poking and prodding and walking and generally feeling like crap from it all. I’m going to give myself a few days to settle into the rhythm of things here, so if you don’t see a journal, it’s okay. I am still alive, somewhere. Possibly holed up in my bed and feeling like hot sweaty arse. On the plus side, this should actually allow me to get some sleep for the first few days while my body decides to behave itself, so we’ll see how it all goes.
Life according to Abigail 
I hope the new drug works out. I guess it’s a question of trying different things until a workable combination is found.
That’s it, unfortunately. It’s a complicated situation and will require a lot of tweaking until we can get the best result. But, I guess you’ve got to be in the game to win it.
I hope this latest change works well for you. I can commiserate regarding crappy health care, although Tom’s got it worse than I do. Be good to yourself and get some rest, sweets. Hope to see you soon. ❤ (AZG)
Appreciated, lovely. Here’s to good health, or at the very least, improving health all round. I think we all deserve a bit of a break.
Amen to that, sister!
It makes me mad that necessary medication is considered not necessary under our healthcare system, the one that’s actively being dismantled by our current government. Nevertheless, I hope it all starts to go well for you. I can’t imagine having to constantly chop and change treatments in order to find one that at least mostly works!
It’s a bit of a shit, frankly. I am honestly concerned at where people with chronic issues are going to end up once they’re done hacking and slashing away. I’m hoping my body quits with the shenanigans and behaves itself on the new meds sooner rather than later, but on the plus side it would appear I can sleep for days!