the other side of the fence...

every day i talk to patients about taking their medications, side effects of their treatment, signs and symptoms of their disease...and my whole job revolves around research. is a higher dose of this medicine more effective than the lower dose? but even if it is, does it have significantly more side effects? what about if the patient reacts to the medication...what do we give then? which is better...this arm of chemotherapy with one block of meds, or this arm of chemotherapy with another slightly different block of meds? and my job is to capture every minute little detail such as a missed dose, a wrong dose, a fever, an infection...so that we can compare this drug to another.
i say all this to say, i do this every day without thinking twice about it...but now i'm on the other side of the fence. i've had rheumatoid arthritis for 15 years now. i've been really blessed to have as few problems as i've had. unfortunately i have had to change meds every 3-4 years because they just quit working. i was on enbrel, remicaid, and then humira. my rheumatoid factor and my sed rate have been going up (this means the inflammation in my body has been increasing) and i've been having a lot more pain. so, i asked dr. gupta what my options were. he wanted me to do a drug where i'd have to go in once a month and have an iv infusion that takes about 1 1/2 hours. i just really don't want to do that. i don't want to have to get an iv once a month, and i don't want to have to take that time off work. the other option was to go on a research protocol. so...i'm doing the research drug.
i went and did my screening on tuesday. i really think they took like 100ml of blood from me. i hadn't eaten because they told me not to so i thought i was going to pass out! but i didn't. they did a chest xray and an ekg and i signed the consent for the protocol. i can't get the first dose of the medicine until 1 month after my last humira shot, so i'm going back for my first dose on october 11.
it's a sq injection, just like my humira, so it goes just under the skin...not into the muscle. after the first 5 or 6 doses i'll be able to give it to myself at home, but they have to monitor me at first to make sure i don't react to the drug. for the first several times i have to go in, get the drug, and be monitored for an hour. it's definitaly not something i'm looking forward to...the office is all the way over by st. francis...but hopefully it will help me feel better and bring my levels down! that would be a miracle!!
please pray for me.