So I take 26 pills/Injections every day. Now this may sound excessive but this is what it takes to keep me running. Some of them are preventative drugs and some are necessary. Although these drugs keep me alive, I have to wonder what they are doing to me long term. Methotrexate, for example, is a low dose chemotherapy drug, eight of the medications are just to promote sleep. If I could sleep, it might just take care of other issues.
Some times I wonder what I would do if I didn’t have good medical insurance. There would be no way I could afford my medications. This is why I believe there needs to be some major changes to our current healthcare system. My brother, for example, is self employed and has only a discount card for his prescriptions. One of the medications he needs costs $1,200 per month (it’s only $400 per month in Canada) so he just goes without the medication he needs. I have excellent medical insurance and I still spend around $20,000 per year in healthcare costs. I don’t know what the answer is. A single-payer system or Medicare for all sound nice but how in the world do they get paid for? Even with all of the technology, the US is consistently ranked near the bottom for healthcare. I will leave that discussion for another day.
A few weeks ago, when I was in the hospital, they refused to give me all of my meds for fear of liability. Some would say that the sleep cocktail I am on is dangerous but without it, I literally don’t sleep at all. At least now, I get one to four hours per night and none only one or two nights per week. Now there are a lot of side effects to these medications. Some cause weight gain, dry mouth, nausea. I am currently on a forty five day course of IV Rocephin which I take twenty-four hours aa day through a picc line. There are days that I can barely eat because the Rocephin wreaks havoc on my stomach.
I really wish I could find a natural and holistic method in treating the issues that I have so that I can cut way back on the medications that I take. If you are like me and you take handfuls of pills everyday, let me know if you have found alternative treatments that are effective. I’m especially interested to know if you have found anything truly effective on chronic insomnia. I feel like if I could get that resolved, I could reduce my medications by almost 50%. All these chemicals that we are putting into our bodies everyday can’t be good for anyone long term. Although I am always amazed at the advances in modern medicine, we just don’t know everything.
I’ve tried meditation, acupuncture, hypnosis, etc. I have searched for years for more natural ways to treat the issues I have but what I know is that there is no panacea out there, Everybody and their brother is part of some sort of multi-level marketing program that sells the cure to everything so I have become extremely skeptical about what I see out there. I even went to a Naturalpath but that was about as useful as a sixth toe. People spend thousands on natural remedies that aren’t effective at all. Someone even told me I needed to go to their Chiropractor because he could make certain adjustments that wold cure my diabetes. So one of these days, someone will discover a natural cure for certain diseases but until then I guess I am relegated to taking handfuls os pills everyday.
Living with Disabilities 