Azilect

The trip to the movement disorder specialist (who will henceforth be referred to as the MDS) wasn’t encouraging. To be fair, it wasn’t absolutely discouraging either. I came forth from her office without a diagnosis as to why I’m so shaky, but with a new pill, Azilect, nonetheless. The running theory is it looks like a fish and smells like a fish so we’ll treat it like a fish, even though we can’t call it a fish without another cardinal sign. Right now we have to say that it’s more of a salamander, but it’s more likely than not that you have a fish there.
The Azilect is good stuff. It works (am I supposed to be encouraged by that? I’m not sure) really well. It’s encouraging that my arm is steady as a rock, but the idea that the treatment regimen that’s working is the treatment for early PD kind of sucks in its own right.
There’s other problems with this particular drug, too. Price is the biggest. The co-pay for this is $60. They told me that at the pharmacy and I about fell over. Of course, I paid for it, I have to, anything that can help is worth it. But I get generics for all of $5 and all my other meds have generics. The Azilect doesn’t. Not only is it without a generic form, but my insurance company says that it’s a “tier 3 medication.” This means, they consider it too new and are unwilling to pay out too much for it. I’d like to know who comes up with this crap. Although, with a cash price of $384, I can see why the insurance company feels that way. This is price gouging that we let drug companies get away with. It probably only costs them ten cents to make one pill and they want more than ten dollars per pill. It’s out of control.
Next problem, this is an MAO-B inhibitor. What’s that mean? It means that every medication out there—and there’s a lot of them I can assure you—that says, “do not take if your taking a MAOI” is now off limits. That means my colds are going to really suck because that describes every cold medicine out there.
Then there’s the food restrictions. Oh goody! There is both German and Slovakian blood in my veins. I swear there’s some genetic predisposition to loving all things cabbage. Sauerkraut is out. Salami is out, as are aged cheeses. Bologna, salami, pepperoni, sausage, jerky, bananas, canned meats(tuna, Spam), any aged meat of any kind(fresh is okay); none of these can I eat. They’re all high in an enzyme called tyramine. Tyramine in excess could cause me to have a sudden, dangerous, and even life-threatening spike in blood pressure. To be fair, I also read that this is not necessarily the case with the Azilect. But after reading the previous literature to this, it’s like putting a bowl of sauerkraut at the other end of the swimming pool filled with alligators. You can tell me that the alligators have all just been well fed so they won’t attack me while they’re digesting. All I have to do to get that bowl of deliciousness is cross the pool without paying any mind to the gators. I’m going to miss my kraut.