Thankful for the Drugs

This is the medicine I take once a week to combat rheumatoid arthritis. Actually it, plus six little pink pills, methotrexate, keep at bay the aching shoulders, swollen joints, and other random pain that baffled me for months before I got this help. I've taken the medicine every Tuesday now for, I guess, a couple of years.

The Enbrel is an injection I give myself. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about that, but the other alternative was an infusion at the doctor's office, and I thought this had to be easier. It is. The SureClick Autoinjector is about the size of a bulky pen. The patient removes the white guard (at the right), presses that end firmly into his upper thigh, and pushes the blue button. It clicks once, and you watch it till that window in the center turns from clear to purple. The device clicks again when all the medicine has been delivered. 

The injectors come four to one of these boxes, three boxes at a time. That much medicine is shockingly expensive, but the insurance pays some, and Pfizer pays all but $10 per four weeks of the rest. What a blessing!

At first, the diagnosis made me feel very old, but then I learned that first diagnosis often comes to people 10 or 20 years younger than I. And although I'm taking two meds because one wasn't enough to cure the symptoms, I met a lady who takes three. The goal is to catch it early before there is permanent joint damage, and thankfully, we have caught it that early in my case.

I haven't made myself an expert on the disease. I don't know if it's been around for centuries, or if there is some poison in our air or water or food that has brought it to us in the industrial age and culture. But I do think about people in Bible times and before. If they had rheumatoid arthritis, they may have just suffered with it. (I know there are some foods that help, so maybe they knew much more than I about that.) I wonder if the aged John the Baptist stayed awake at night because he couldn't arrange his limbs in any way to get comfortable in the bed. I wonder if Solomon's description of aging in Ecclesiastes included this experience with rheumatoid arthritis.

Maybe not. But I'm very grateful for doctors and researchers who have found this way to help people like me. (And I try not to remember all the warnings I've skimmed in the small print filling a leaflet that comes with every box.)