Take Your Best Shot.

Wit and Wisdomby Beth Broderick“Hey. I think I should check in with you more, like a lot more, if you are going to be on that medication.”My sister Laura found out about my new prescription by reading this column. We see each other once or twice a week, but I had not discussed it with her yet.“It seemed like the lesser of two evils,” I told her. “But yeah, that ‘black box suicidey’ thing is a little worrisome. It would be great if you could keep tabs on me.”My old medication had stopped working, and the pain had been breaking through. There are a lot of treatments for my disease, but we were looking for one that specifically blocks the N17 immune response. The two new ones the doc offered both have “black box” (potentially fatal) side effects. There was the one that causes heart attack and stroke, and the other, which carries a great big dose of depression and can lead to the above-mentioned suicide. I went with the latter because… stroke… Ew! Plus, it seemed less likely to kill me out of the gate.The new medication, Bimzelx (where do they come up with these names?), worked like gangbusters for my skin, which had been sporting painful psoriatic patches for so long I had forgotten they could be cured. The jury was out on the joint pain, but I was willing to bet that with time that would improve. One week in, things were looking good.Of course, I knew better than to get excited.I was on a medication a while back that worked really well until the day I got into the shower and screamed in pain as my whole body turned lobster red. The touch of even a drop of water was excruciating. Turns out that sort of thing was a mean old “side effect.” I was given steroid shots and pain pills, and we moved on to a different regimen. You win some, you lose some in this game.In the main, this stuff is a blessing. Notwithstanding the ridiculous assertions of our new administration, modern medicine is a wonder. It has completely altered the future of people living with diseases like mine. We are thriving. I have a crippling illness that has been chasing me for years. It has not caught up. I can still walk ten miles a day, hit the gym, and lift my gorgeous nephew to the sky. Modern medicine rocks big time. I am grateful for it every damned day.Still, there are cautions.THE FINE PRINT.Most of the time, the warning labels on medicines are laughable. I gave up reading them a long time ago, but I will have Laura do it so she can recognize it if I have taken a bad turn. She dutifully combed through the many mishaps that could befall a gal on the new shots. Laura surmised that if the patient managed to not kill themselves, then the worst of it was the potential for serious IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). A person can live with that, I thought.Then the dreams started, or rather the nightmares. They were the worst I have ever had. They had a psychotropic quality that assaulted my nervous system. I woke up crying a few times, screaming others. My sleep patterns were disrupted. I felt edgy and weird, but I was pretty sure I could overcome that. I started adding a quarter dose of trazodone at night, and it helped for a minute. I got eight hours of sleep the first time I did that and was sure I could navigate the troubles.Then the depression landed. It felt like an alien had straddled my cranium and was sucking up whatever good stuff might exist inside my head. The thing was the very definition of a “killjoy.” I was numb and had trouble focusing (let’s face it, I can have trouble focusing on any slow Tuesday, so I did not count that part). I kept on walking the dog and trying to work, but my body felt heavy, my eyes ached. I tried to take naps, but that made me anxious. I just kept plodding on, sure that the clouds would lift. The “black dog,” as Winston Churchill used to call depression, would stop barking.“Hey. Just calling to see how you are doing.”“Not great.”My voice felt tight, my breathing shallow. I had been on the verge of tears for three days, and at last they fell and fell and fell. Laura listened as I tried to articulate what was wrong. I was worried that I had failed somehow, had given in to the power of suggestion. I was certain that the problem was me.“No. Sis. It’s the medication. When did you take your last shot?”“Eight days ago.”“Ah, we’ve got a ways to go, but it WILL wear off, okay? This is not a permanent situation. It will wear off.”She called every day, and Michael checked in every evening. I worked, I wrote, I did a few auditions, I went to the gym… whether I wanted to or not (I did not, but I went). I visited the girls and played with their baby boy. His joy can lift even the saddest of spirits. The days passed, and I felt lighter, more myself. Most of my friends never knew that I was struggling; I am a very good actor, after all. The stuff wore off eventually, thank God. My joint pain had never lessened, and in a way, that was a comfort. The medication had not worked, so it was a no-brainer to get off of it. I wasn’t taking any more chances.My doctor and I decided to forgo the other new N17 blocker. That heart attack/stroke business held little appeal for me. We settled on Enbrel. It’s been around for years and has a good track record. It is more broad-spectrum than the other two, but there are no “black box” warnings. It is delivered by a weekly shot into the abdomen or thigh. I took my second one about an hour ago, and there have been zero side effects so far. It will be a month or two before we know if it will work, but as long as it keeps me at a pain threshold that I can cope with, I will be happy to muddle along.There were a lot of black clouds over Los Angeles last week as various storms threatened our city. They have passed, for now at least. The tropical storm headed out to sea, the interference of the newly politicized FCC finally challenged. The skies are clearer for the moment, though none of us knows what lies ahead. We are in for a lot more weather, and some of it could get very bad indeed. We know for certain that it cannot be good that so many of us are afraid to watch the news, afraid to look at the phone past a certain hour. Every news cycle presents us with a whole new set of reasons to lose sleep. I was lucky to have something to blame for my wakeful, watchful nights.We need to remember to check in with each other. It’s been a rough go, and it’s going to get rougher before things take a turn toward the light. Even an antelope knows that there is strength in numbers.I pulled a full Lucy in the park with Fairness a few days ago. I went down hard, and my right knee is not happy about it. It has been giving me fits. I’ve got it in a brace by day and am soothing it with an ice pack at night. I am still doing my ten miles, ‘cause that’s how I roll. Going uphill is a piece of cake; the trouble starts on the way down. I have come up with a solution of sorts, whereby I descend going sideways, crab-walk style. Fairness gives me the side-eye whenever I use this technique, but he slows his pace and sticks close by in case whatever cockamamie thing I am doing trips me up again.Yesterday, at the top of the hills, my knee carefully wrapped, my head blessedly clear, I looked down and could see the whole of Los Angeles. I could see to Century City and well beyond. It was a crisp morning, and the skies were cloudless and the bluest of blues. The words of the great Maya Angelou rang in my head:“Every storm runs out of rain.”Yes. Yes indeed.On we go …We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our valued subscribers whose support makes the publication of Wit and Wisdom possible. Thank you! This is a public episode. 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