posted
Oh, Jason... I'm sorry to hear that you're having such troubles... I can understand why you'd just be tired of it all now... I would be, too.
As for the cost of prescriptions each year, so far this year I believe my insurance has paid about $4K for prescriptions, and I've paid another $400 in copays. Thankfully, I have VERY good insurance. Also, thankfully, almost all of the medications I use are available as a generic, and my doctors will allow me to USE the generics. That saves me and my insurance company a TON of money.
For office visit copays, I've paid out about $500, and I've paid about $300 for hospital stay copays. I'm not even sure how much I've paid for my labwork and testing portions as not all of that is covered by my insurance. My insurance has paid more than I even want to know in office visit fees, seeing that I mostly only see specialists, I know my insurance paid almost $10K for my hospital stay when all was said and done. My various lab work and everything? It's in the thousands... easily.
Moral of the story? I pay dearly for my insurance, but it's worth every penny because they pay dearly to insure me. I couldn't survive without it. Even with the coverage though, I can barely afford to be this sick... we're only halfway through the year, and I'm still waiting on some bills for my portion of some labwork. Gak. That's the stuff that kills me - labwork and testing.
And none of this counts my vision and dental, which has also been high this year because my prescriptions have caused vision and dental problems. WTF. That SUCKS!
But I can't complain... at least I have insurance, and I'm able to work - I'm light years ahead of where I was last year. I was on unpaid disability for 6 months last year because of these headaches. I'm STILL trying to catch up those bills.... and I'm still a lot luckier than many people. I know that, and I'm not complaining. It's all just part of being sick. The trick is just keeping the job and the insurance
-------------------- "You are anal twattypoo who has ruined my good mood" PsyLiam to TSN May 01,2006.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Insurane has been areal life-saver for me also, but last year I was spending between $300-$500 each month on out-of-pocket uncovered expenses.
This year, my insurance said I could get my supplies all covered by a company called edge Park- they'd send them all right to my house.
Which they did....once. Then they decided that it was all "over the counter" stuff and that my insurance should not be paying for any of it. Despite my having prescriptions for it all!
I've got an agent at BlueCross fighting for me on this, but it's 50/50% weither I'll have to go back to paying all that myself.
I'm crossing my fingers on that one- just the Zinc Oxide and Telfa I use each day (to cover my wound and aproximate skin) is about $8.00. Shit adds up at the end of the month.
Luckily, I've had my prescriptions lowered (they did nothing anyway) to only abouut $75 (out of pocket) monthly, from last year's $200.
LOA, have you tried Googling for "headache related vision problems"? There seems to be a lot on the subject (though that's just more to sift through, I know).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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I have tried that, and the problem is, I can't find my specific sympton listed anywhere.
My opthamologist thought I was crazy when I told him what was going on at my appointment last month, and he told me that I just had hypotension causing the issues. My PCP and my Neuro have both told me that's not possible - my blood pressure is the best it's ever been and I don't have any of the other symptoms of hypotension. Besides, that particular symptom is not present in Hypotension in the research I've done.
If I could find a name for my symptom, it would help.
My Neuro has heard of people complaining of the same thing, but it's always been a side effect of medication - in my case, we've switched out all of my meds, but the side effect is not only still present, but getting a lot worse. So I'm thinking it's probably not from the meds.
It's very frustrating.
I'll talk to him about it again tomorrow. It's going to be a long appointment. He LOVES long appointments. :-) Thanks for your help though... Lord knows, more brains is better than just my own right now!
-------------------- "You are anal twattypoo who has ruined my good mood" PsyLiam to TSN May 01,2006.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Man, veteran benefits are great when reading some of this. I hardly go to the hospital...like once in over two years. Thankfully the visits are free and medication $8 per prescription.
-------------------- I'm slightly annoyed at Hobbes' rather rude decision to be much more attractive than me though. That's just rude. - PsyLiam, Oct 27, 2005.
Registered: May 1999
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posted
Hobbes, what king of vet bennies have you got? I thought you were still in.
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I had my bi-weekly Neuro appointment yesterday. It could have gone better. We talked about the visual disturbances. The doctor, who is one of the best in the state, said he's never ever had a patient complain of anything like what I'm describing outside of it being a medication side effect, specific to one particular medication, Topamax, which I've been off for months. He said usually when he takes patients off of that drug, once it's out of their system (about a week) the visual issues are gone and never manifest themselves again. In my case, they are not only still here, but getting worse.
We discussed the possibility of another medication causing it. Not likely because we have changed all of my medication 3x over since the vision problems started.
I asked if it was a possible opthomalgic issue, even though my opthomalgist ruled it out. He said no. It's definately related to my brain.
We discussed the possiblity that somehow, even though we've changed all of my medications, we have put me back on medications by coincidence that keep causing the same side effect in me. This is highly unlikely and would be an amazing coincidence, but something to consider.
We also discussed the possibility the Something Else is the cause.
The vision problems may or may not be migraine disease related - they do not correlate with my headaches, but migraine disease is a neugological condition, and the headache is just a symptom of the disease, so it's hard to say. The problem is, he's never in all of his years of dealing with migrane patients, has someone like me.
I'm having this problem off and on throughout the day now though, both when lying down and upright. Luckily, I haven't had the problem yet at work, but many times at home, several times while out with my boyfriend, and a few times while driving. Instead of double vision, I suddenly see 7 or 8 ghost images trailing behind everything I look at... it's very disorienting. Luckily, I can still sort of predict when it's going to happen, but I'm losing faith in that as the problem gets worse.
The new plan of action: I have an MRI scheduled for next week to rule out a brain tumor/blood clot/aneurysm/stroke/etc. Most likely it will come back with normal results as I just had one 1.5 years ago, but we still have to check before we make some of the next steps... also, we are cutting ALL of my medications out. Starting this week with my sleeping pill. After that, it will be my preventatives, one by one. Eventually, I will be left with no medications. No allergy meds, birth control, migraine meds, nothing. As we're doing this, we're going to go slowly and one at a time to see at what point, if any, the visual problems stop or change. This is going to be hard on my body as my allergy meds and birth control are controlling other medical issues that I'd rather not deal with that ALSO contribute to my migrainse, so my body will pretty much be a loose cannon again, but I will do as my doctor says, because I don't want to get to the next phase.
If, once I'm off of everything, there is still no change in the visual disturbances, I will be allowed to go BACK on the allergy medications and birth control. We will re-evaluate my preventatives and sleeping pills and generate a new plan for those. And an appointment will be made for me at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ.
This is something I don't want to do. Even though the visual disturbances are a problem and they are screwing with my life and just getting worse, going to the Mayo Clinic is something that financially, I just can't even fathom trying to do. There's airfare to consider, hotel accomodations, transportation in Scottsdale, and the cost of going to the Clinic, as my insurance won't cover it. I'm still so far in debt from last year's medical bills and from not working for 6 months that I can't even imagine taking on this burden. So we'll see what happens from here. What will be will be. That's all I can say....
~Liz
-------------------- "You are anal twattypoo who has ruined my good mood" PsyLiam to TSN May 01,2006.
Registered: Mar 1999
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I was thinking that, rather than a sole perscription causing these visual disturbances, it might be the particular combonation of meds with your chemistry that are causing it.
I read somewhere online that taking painkillers (and illegal drugs) for long periods of time can permanantly alter how your body deals with other incoming drugs, and that a lot of new drugs are not (can not be) tested for combonation reactions with multiple drugs- there's just too many possible combonations.
Hopefully the disturbances will stop completely once you're off the meds. It's definitely going to be hard on you, kicking everything all at once.
quote:The problem is, he's never in all of his years of dealing with migrane patients, has someone like me.
Oh yes. I know that crap. Noting like a doctor to find medical novelty in your suffering, is there?
I've looked into places like the Mayom Clinic and Bethesda Hospital, but it's impossible to just call up, get someone that knows anything on the phone and work something out- particularly when you're already seeing a big "specialist".
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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"I was thinking that, rather than a sole perscription causing these visual disturbances, it might be the particular combonation of meds with your chemistry that are causing it."
Could be, but honestly, I take very few pain killers... I mean, I've got the 'scripts for them, and I've got access to them, but I really very rarely take them anymore - maybe 4-5 days a month, tops, and I hardly ever take more than one dose. I just am sick of poisoning my body with painkillers, so I don't anymore - besides, they aren't effective anymore, and I didn't want to up my prescription strength, so I just stopped taking them for the most part. That doesn't mean there's no validity to what you're saying - it just means that compared to a lot of chronic pain patients, I'm awfully tough
"Also - the side effect sounds like LSD effects... Are you going to start "hanging around" golden gate park in a white robe? [Smile] "
Don't you mean LDS? It's funny you should day that, because one of the medications that I do take for extreme pain, dihydroergotomine, or DHE 45, will actually test positive as LSD if I'm given a drug test. I don't know why exactly, but that's why Elvist tested postive for LSD on his autopsy - he had DHE 45 in his system.
"Another thing even though it probably does not contraindicate with any prescription medicine - do you drink/imbibe caffine or nicotine?"
Absolutely no nicotine (not even second hand now that smoking is not allowed in public places in WA!) and very little caffine - Caffine can trigger migraines, theoreticly, so I avoid it. Occasionally I'll have a Pepsi or a single shot espresso when I'm in the middle of a migraine attack, but that's because when the migraine is actually happening, caffine can actually HALT it, too. Figure that out. It can cause it and it can stop it. Weird science at it's best, I tell you what....!
"I've looked into places like the Mayom Clinic and Bethesda Hospital, but it's impossible to just call up, get someone that knows anything on the phone and work something out- particularly when you're already seeing a big "specialist"."
Truthfully, I have no desire to go to Mayo - I've heard bad things about the Clinic from people in my migraine support group who have gone there for their headaches. However, it IS high tech and cutting edge, there's no doubt about that. Most of the negativity that I've heard deals with the way they prescribe medications (or actually don't), but since I don't WANT more meds, I guess that's not really a problem for me.... Dr. Wurst has sent patients there before, so he has a working relationship with the clinic, I guess. His office would make the arrangements for my appointment and getting my charts down there and all of that. I just don't want to get to that point. I'm hoping we can figure something out locally. I'd really just rather deal with stuff in-house than pay all that money to travel down there.....
~Liz
-------------------- "You are anal twattypoo who has ruined my good mood" PsyLiam to TSN May 01,2006.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
Find large rock. Apply liberally to skull repeatedly. Problem solved.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
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Shik, I am not sure that is a good idea, maybe a small rock would work just as well and be easier to hang on to.
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
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Poor guy- stuck in a predestnation paradox that way....
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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