Category: Medical Issues

I switched from Zocor and Zetia to Vytorin (yes, I feel like a drug commercial). I was told by Medco that it would be a $100.00 copay since it was nonformulary. Formulary copays are $62.50, for it wasn’t much of a savings, so I was torn.

I got the “bill” off the internet today and they charged non-formulary price, so now I’m getting two drugs for the price of one formulary copay ($62.50) — NOT bad. But I wonder why they didn’t tell me that. Weird….

And the depo arrived today — at least it’s on the doorstep — husband will have to bring it in. Apparenlty the generic isn’t available yet, but it was $42.00 instead of $56 which is what the regular pharmacy charges. Since it is cheaper than a copay, I pay for the cost.

It’s almost the end of the year, and we STILL don’t have a continuous blood glucose monitor for patient use. Right now, Minimed has one that doctors can order and you wear for 3 days, but there is no real time readout.

Both Therasense — now owned by Abbott and Minimed were supposed to have one out by the end of the year.

Well, we have a couple of weeks yet, but I’m not holding my breath.

Medco makes me wonder some times… I decided to stick with Depo, and I’ve being charged full price for Depo. If I go with the new generic, it is still is pretty costly, but if I use the mail order portion, the price drops substantially.

So I called the ob/gyn office and requested a script and sent it out, and now I’m waiting for the Depo. The really good news, is that I don’t need it until around the 10th of January.

Of course, I’m always interested in anything like this.

I’m STILL not sure I want to do gastric surgery, though if I do, I need to start getting things together now, if I want to do it, as I would want to do it sometime after the AP Computer Science test.

Bariatric Surgery use in Type 2 Diabetes

Non-randomised observational studies show that bariatric surgery has a highly beneficial impact on diabetes. Bariatric surgery leads to remission of diabetes in at least two thirds of patients, and reductions in drug therapy for many others. Those with more recent onset diabetes, fewer treatment requirements, and able to achieve most weight loss are more likely to achieve remission. Therefore, bariatric surgery is an attractive treatment option to consider for selected more severely obese patients with favourable characteristics. Although data on bariatric surgery in subjects with diabetes are provocative, all recent clinical studies have been uncontrolled or otherwise flawed. Moreover, bariatric surgery has yet to be compared either with medical treatment for weight loss, or against standard medical treatment for diabetes in any randomised controlled trial with diabetes-specific end points. There remains a need for long-term randomised controlled trials before bariatric surgery is used more widely as a first-line treatment for obese patients with type 2 diabetes.

Review of Insulin Therapy — Daugherty 17 (1): 10 — Journal of Pharmacy Practice

I am still looking for Type 2 diabetes to participate in a research study.

This is the information from the researcher:

Several months ago we had exchanged email concerning this research
project that I am doing with diabetes. We have evaluated 4 groups of
physicians – housestaff, internal medicine faculty, endocrinologists,
and private primary care physicians. They each performed a series of
pairwise comparisons assessing the relative importance of 4 indicators
of diabetes management.

While we hope to make the task a bit more complex in the near future, we
would first like to compare our physician results with a group of
patients. We are looking for type II diabetics who have computer
literacy. If you could assemble a group of 10 or so, we would be very
grateful. We believe that patients may have different priorities than
physicians, and want to test that hypothesis.

I’m looking for 8 diabetics who are Type 2 and are computer savvy for a study for a doctor.

If you would like to participate, please send me your email address. Send it to kathleenw at gmail . com (spaces inserted on purpose) with the subject line: Diabetic Study and I’ll add you to the list.

Bearing the Olympic Torch for Diabetes Awareness

Our patients often teach us more than we could ever teach them. Gary Hall, Jr, an 8-time Olympic medal winner, is one such patient (Figure 1). I was with him when he won 4 of those medals, and I am heading to Athens to see if he can win more. This is the first in a series of reports as I start my journey to the birthplace of the modern Olympics; in this report I will recount my past 6 years as the physician on the team of an elite athlete.

DB’s Medical Rants ? Is FDA approval enough?
As a user of both drugs and medical devices, I believe that FDA approval is enough.
I personally am appalled at the number of lawsuits and amount of money that has been award people.
I’ve even taken at least one of the drugs that people have won money for, and didn’t “sign” up for the suit.
I also figure one of the reasons the price tag is so high on these items is the legal costs.
I think it will be a win – win all around.
OF course, all bets are off if the item is prescribed off-label.

The Health Care Blog

If you don’t care to go back to the archives, a short recap ….

My doctor and I decided that I should go on the pump because I was gaining weight on MDI and had what I felt was inadequate control with shots.

It was the right decision, but the idiot HMO said, NO, you have to throw all the diabetes meds in the world at her in combination before we’ll approve it.

I’d had my full of diabetes drugs after the first one, and besides, insulin really is better and the pump is the most efficient way to deliver it.

And by the way, I’ve been steadily losing weight again.