Hello,
There are few different flavors of Multiple Sclerosis; and more than a few different flavors of medication. There are injectables, IV administered, pills; and they can be daily, every other day, weekly, monthly, etc. In my experience, it is good that we have all of these options, because they all come with their own challenges.
For the first 3 years, I took a drug called Avonex. Avonex, an interferon medication, was a once a week injection. Whereas many injections are subcutaneous, Avonex is an intramuscular; meaning that you have to penetrate into the muscle and not just through the skin. For me, this was torture. Every Friday, I would have to stick myself with an inch and a half long needle in one of several locations, inject slowly, and withdraw. I did not have an easy time with this.
There are multiple spots where you can inject (top of thigh, side of thigh, butt, etc.) but I found that the only place where I could successfully inject was my thigh; both top and side. I'm not a squeamish person, and I have a very high pain tolerance, but as the weeks, months, and years passed, I developed a severe anxiety come injection time. I had a hard time penetrating the skin with the needle, and felt every millimeter of that metal slide in and out. To make matters worse, I had hit a nerve more than once... making me even more afraid every time I unsheathed the needle.
Once the needle was extracted, I would bleed like a stuck pig (wonderful imagery, I know | unfortunately I'm a bleeder; found this out the first time I gave blood and frightened all the nurses when I was very close to needing cauterization.) I would need to massage the injection site and put pressure on it for 20+ minutes each time.
You would think that once the actual injection was over that I was free and clear, but no, that was only the eye of the hurricane. About 4-6 hours after the injection, the side effects would kick in; and subsequently kick my butt.
I would take my injection every Friday evening between 7-10 pm, and take a dose of Excedrin Migraine about 30 minutes prior to help minimize side effects. I would drift to sleep easily, hoping to make it through the night without incident, BUT NEIGH! In the middle of the night, the severe chills would start. I would pile on clothes and blankets, put on hot compresses and heating pads, drink copious amounts of tea and other hot beverages... but until it passed, I was gonna shiver uncontrollably (I have actually chattered my teeth so much that my jaw would be sore the next day.) I would usually carry flu-like symptoms for at least a day, most often 2 days; meaning that I would finally recover just in time for work... oh the irony.
I tried everything I could think of to make the whole process easier. I would ice the injection spots until they were numb, double up on my pre-meds, have plenty of fluids, bundle up in order to preempt the chills, etc. I even read about some people having a glass or two of wine just before to ease their way through (probably not something any of us should promote, even though some of these MS meds have no drug or alcohol interactions.) Alas, nothing worked. Most people would record a reduction in number and severity of symptoms as time progressed, but mine seemed to ramp up. This was compounded by a build up of scar tissue in my injection sites.
My Multiple Sclerosis did respond well to Avonex, but the side effects were taking a tremendous toll. I spoke to my neurologist, and after a few more months and additional attempts at mitigating strategies, we decided to change medications. Ultimately, my next set of meds would go much, much worse... but I'll save that for my next posting.
Thanks for reading,
Adam
p.s. I should mention that the medications I will be talking about for this post, and the next 2 or 3 are meant to stave off Multiple Sclerosis attacks. There are another host of medications that I will discuss in the future that are meant to repair the damage caused by an attack.
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