Lately, I have been having a difficult time.  I had to cancel a medicine that I was taking that was definitely helping the depression, due to the cost.  The insurance company decided to raise the copay and there is not a generic available.  It was a difficult decision, but the lack of money to pay for it made the final decision.  Now I am in the process of finding a new med that would replace that med.  It doesn’t seem right, when the other one was working just fine.  However, this is the way life is.  I either go broke, or I feel better.  That seemed to be my choices.  You can not get a discount, that some drug companies provide to help with their cost, if you are on Medicare.  Yea for me, I’m on Medicare.  It is not the first time that Medicare decided to mess with my prescriptions.  Unfortunately, I am sure it will not be the last.

A year or so back, I was on another drug that helped me stay awake, for the most part, during the day.  I have chronic fatigue which is part of my dysautonomic disorder.  I was sleeping more then half the day away.  They had a drug that was working, to keep me mostly awake.  I was on it for a couple years, when Medicare decided to pull the plug on it and not allow it because it was not being used for it’s “prescribed” use, according to FDA guidelines.  I spent the next year or so sleeping.  But that was alright, since it didn’t work all the time.  At least that is what one doctor told me.  Tell that to my kids who get to watch their mother sleep.

Now I am on a drug for ADD.  It definitely keeps me awake, even when I don’t want to be.  But, hey, that is more normal then being asleep all the time.  It is a controlled substance, so I have to pick up a written prescription every month.  Truthfully, it does work better then the last drug.  The insurance company got it right this time.  Let’s hope they don’t pull this one, or significantly raise the price of it.  I do not want to sleep all the time.  Well, usually.

When my first depression medicine quit working and I ended up hospitalized.  The period was very dark.  I was crying all the time.  They put me on a new prescription that seemed to put a halt to the tears.  Something was finally working.  Then I got a letter, that, at first, said the insurance company wasn’t going to cover it, that I should try something else.  I was outpatient by this time and not crying.  They wanted me to try drugs I had already tried.  My doctor and I fought it and won.  They allowed me that drug.  It’s a higher tier, but we can manage.

Then came a need to get me over the depression edge.  I was just tinkering on it.  Things were better, but not great.  I don’t mean euphoric, that would present another problem.  I still wasn’t happy even some of the time, but I was surviving.  I knew I had reason to be better.  I have very loving, supportive, friends and family.  I just could not get over that hump.  That’s when they introduced me to another drug to work together with the first.  After time it started to work.  That’s about the time that the insurance company decided to raise the copay to an amount I could not afford.  Not with the med’s I already take at least.  I had to pick and choose which one’s I could do without.  I don’t know that I can do without this one, but it was the most expensive on my list.  It had to go.

Now the days seem longer, the nights are harder.  I had my first suicidal thoughts in a long time, just the other day.  I have, as I have said, a family I care about.  I realize these thoughts are not rational, but they are convincing when the darkness wraps itself around me.  I found myself getting the talk about how some people might be okay without me, not all would.  A few of my friends and family confirmed this.  I did not go around sharing my thoughts until after the threat.  It is too hard to raise the alarm when it is happening.  My mind was messing with me.  It was telling me that everyone would be fine without me.  It was difficult to hear, the next day, that that wasn’t the truth, but humbling.

We are trying another medicine.  It is not cheap, but it is not as expensive as the other one was.  Hopefully it will work.  In the meantime, my husband keeps watch of me, and I hope.  I hope it works and I hope my insurance company doesn’t have other ideas for it.