I Have It, But It Doesn't Have Me!

When I stopped over at my parent's house last weekend, my extremely literate family handed me the front page of the Wall Street Journal. On the front page was an article talking about how the Epilepsy Foundation, with support from big drug companies, is making laws about doctor control over prescribing brand name drugs.



Now, I read The Truth about Drug Companies, and I know for a fact that generics are the same chemically as brand name counterparts. The only difference is the amount of advertising and various donations and gifts (i.e. bribes) that Big Pharma churns out every year.

Now since my last seizures, in May, I decided I should finally accept my condition, so as to get over it. I signed up for an account on the Epilepsy Foundation and found a group on Facebook that provide support. It's helped me realize I have it pretty good, all things considered. I even picked up Epileptic by David B., a graphic novel (i.e. comic book) that conveys epilepsy in a way no one has before or since. The images of epilepsy as a ghost and a series of mountains to climb both resonate with me.



I even found a blog entitled Cookie Wonton, through it's sending of visitors to my site, written by a mom talking about raising two kids with epilepsy. It's an interesting perspective and has a fresh tone, I'm lucky to have found it.

The WSJ article struck a nerve though. Personally, I feel like neurologists should be able to prescribe whatever. No one should be able to alter it. So I like the move. My doctor was clearly irritated by the quick swap Walgreen's made, switching me to a generic. But he acknowledged, like the doctors in the article, that essentially, chemically, there is no difference in the drugs. It's an interesting topic, and I'm sorry if I'm boring anyone about this, but when something is like a monkey on your back you can't help but try to rationalize it.

Read my post at the Foundation here and my post on the Facebook group here.

Bye Bye Supermodel Drug

Zonisamide takes 105 hours to fully leave the human body. I stopped taking it last Wednesday. This means that sometime in the middle of the night, I became prescription-drug free for the first time in a shade under 4 years. Why drop the pills? Well, for one they made me ornery. Two, they made me not like food. Three, they made me stupid, especially when I took 6 per day.



So imagine a dumb, moody, skinny version of yourself* that you have to inhabit, just because of little capsules that apparently cure your rare form of epilepsy. Why wouldn't you take them out of fear? I'll tell you the fourth reason- big pharma is big-time evil. Read something about it here.

If you're not the clicking type, let me explain. I was on 6 pills a day of a designer (not generic) drug at the start (Zonegran), which costs $2 a pill. That's $12 a day and ~$360 per month. I paid $25, and my medical insurance was paid for by my parents then, but now it's $110 a month (for the second tier of coverage). So where did the drug company get its $250 a month? From taxpayers (through subsidies) and the healthy.

$250 a month is $3000 per year that people were paying for me. Thanks for that, everyone. But I can do it all alone now. How? Exercise and stress management. Live life and have fun, not worrying about money and all that jazz. Oh, and sorry to my neurologist, I'm sure Esai/Elan/Pfizer weren't happy with your lowered prescription rate of the drug. Also, my weight data was probably unreliable because I did a little fibbing about what I was taking... Sorry big Pharma, I know you were trying to make this the new weight loss drug on the sly, without my consent. Why? 'Cause I googled my drug.



Also, sorry to anybody I've been a whiny baby to the last 4 years. I don't feel that part of me anymore. And it's great.

*That's why it's called a supermodel drug.