The Taper…

Well it’s official, I’m getting off all steroids once and for all!!! Woot!

I was already tapering off Prednisone at an incredibly slow rate, as in 1mg for every three weeks. I was set to be completely off Prednisone on August 29th… of this year…

Today on our usual walk to the coffee shop for our Tuesday lunch, we stopped by CVS Pharmacy to pick up a couple of prescriptions. Let me preface this by saying that my insurance ran out on May 31st and starts again on June 1st. We have health insurance through Farmboy’s business and it’s one of those high deductible health plans with a health savings account. Normally, healthy people should have these plans, and not freaks like myself, but after last year, I decided that doing one of those 80/20 plans would make me crazy. I have a $2,500.00 deductible and after that is paid, everything is covered. So last year I blew the deductible on one trip to the emergency room and everything after that was covered. Now we are starting again…

So I made sure that my last Remicade infusion took place on May 31st so it was completely covered (that is about $4,000 a pop)… today I’m in CVS looking at a 30 day supply of Entocort costing $1,400.00. Needless to say I wasn’t expecting that and wondered really quick whether or not I actually needed $1,400.00 worth of anything.

I ran home and called my GI doctor and asked him if this Entocort stuff was really worth anything.. I mean really… how about we try to taper off that stuff… I’m already walking around with $4,000.00 worth of nuclear waste (Remicade) in my body… why do we need to bother with this other stuff? He agreed and started the taper. I should be off of this stuff by the end of this month.

So now I’m on a taper off of the Prednisone and the Entocort. For those of you keeping score at home:

Prednisone – 4
Entocort – 2

Today’s Glutie award goes to CVS Pharmacy… nice pharmacy people, they know me by now and they are nice enough to say.. “Hey, you might want to call your doctor and see if you really need this stuff… it’s crazy expensive”

It’s nice to see them every Tuesday when I go and pick up my meds.

Cheers!

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