Lyrica

I fell asleep last night.  Okay, not last night, six o’clock in the evening.   I woke up after midnight, had some limeade, let the dog out and went straight back to sleep.   We got in from our sailing trip Thursday night late, after midnight.  I went to sleep late, even though we didn’t do much in the way of unpacking and repacking for the family reunion we were leaving for in thirty-two hours later.

After my in-laws left from bringing us home from the airport, we started laundry, got the children in bed and found the necessary things we needed for the night like device chargers, tooth brushes, etc.  Before I knew it it was three in the morning.   It didn’t help that I was back up at six o’clock to get started on my long list of things to do before we left the following morning.

Given all that, I’m not surprised I fell asleep when I took a few minutes to lie down and check email. But there’s another factor that could be in play, making me comfortable enough to fall asleep easily.   To explain why I need to delve into some back story first though.

I have a spinal cord injury.   That’s simplifying it, but that’s what I tell people if it comes up, because it’s succinct and conveys I’ve got pain without going into a long explanation.

The elevator speech for what I have is that I likely broke my neck as a child and no one realized it.   There are multiple events that are suspect in my mind, but at this point, we’ll never know.  Based on when symptoms began to appear, it was likely in my early teens.   My neck healed improperly and over time I began to have symptoms.   Without having anything formally diagnosed, I had different treatments for the symptoms I had, which only increased over time.   Eventually I had the full extent of the damage and degeneration diagnosed and shortly after that had the first of two spinal fusions.

Surgery made things a lot better, but there’s no real fixing the situation and making all well.   Degeneration has continued, which is what I was told would happen.   I was thankfully medication-free for the five years surrounding having and nursing my two children.   It just worked out that way with timing, but I am very grateful that it did.

I’ve had to add back medication slowly over time, fighting it the whole way.   My fear is that anything I begin taking now, I’ll be stuck with forever.   Maybe another surgery could help, but much of the damage is where the existing fusions are and the next step will like be fusing more vertebra, making me sort of Frankenstein like with much reduce ability to turn and bend my neck.

What I started taking about six years ago was Lyrica.   It’s a nerve medication that significantly reduces the constant nerve burning sensation I have in my neck, arms and upper torso.   I started on a low dose but over the years we’ve had to increase it to combat the increasing nerve pain.

All was well with the Lyrica until we had to change insurance companies this year.  We’re self-employed as real estate agents and are limited to companies and plans available on the marketplace. In order to keep the network of Duke providers, we had only one choice.  My daughter and I both needed to remain with Duke.   So we switched.

If you’ve done this before (and most of us have) the new insurance company puts you through the prior authorization process for a lot of things.   It doesn’t matter that you’ve been on a medication for years.   It doesn’t count as a “need” just because your provider prescribed the medication for you.   It’s a process, I know, but sometimes it takes a long time to work through.

I was due for a refill of Lyrica on January 25th.  We’ve been trying to get the Lyrica approved since early January.   My primary care provider tried for a bit but I transferred care to a spine specialist in February and they took over the process at that point.   I had some extra medication I used for a bit, then they put me on samples.   I got a lot of sample packets for a while.   We kept thinking we’d get it solved, but the insurance company wasn’t budging.   Or, rather, they had requirements we needed to meet.

One of them was I had to try an alternate medication.   I’ve been on Gabapentin for several months now.  It is also a nerve medication, but it doesn’t work as well for me.   We’ve had to increase the dosage to quite a high level, and it still isn’t knocking back the nerve pain like Lyrica did.

It sounds easy, getting the right information to the insurance company so they’ll approve the medication you were already taking and needed.   I could write a week of blog posts on everything we did that we though would work, but didn’t.   This post is already long and wordy enough though, so suffice it to say, everyone was doing their part, trying to get the Lyrica approved,

Yesterday my phone rang with an unknown local number.   It was Lawrence from the spine clinic.   He knew I was in for only one day between trips but he’d been working on things while I’d been away.   He told me about a long phone call he’d had with the insurance company, going over all the additional options they might have made me try that either I’d already tried years ago or wouldn’t work for me based on other criteria.   At the end of the call she said, “it sounds like she’s a good candidate for Lyrica.”

Lawrence told me to start the Lyrica today, using the last bit of samples I had, and when I saw him at the end of the month the prescription should finally be approved.   (The prescription I’ve had the pharmacist try to fill at least twelve times by now.). I hung up, after gushing excitement and gratitude to Lawrence, and ran to tell my husband.

Last night I started the Lyrica.   Today is a good day.   There have been a lot of difficult days over the past few months with nerve pain that’s not well-controlled.   I’m hoping there will be a lot more good days in my future.

Now, when you read this pretend I posted it last night and not in the car this morning.   You know how I hate missing writing a blot post…

The Big Boy Update:  My son was talking to me yesterday as we left the Chiropractors office.   I am not even sure what he heard when we were there but he made me laugh when he said, “I don’t know why, but that reminds me of the word ‘puberty’."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I was talking to my daughter as I packed yesterday.   I told her I was packing her things for her but when she got older she’d be able to do it herself.   She said that reminded her of a dream.   In it she had an “age spinner”.   You could spin it and whatever number came up would be your age.   She had turned it to sixteen because she said she really wanted to be sixteen.