And I'll ... if I wanna.

[gement]

Last night I had my first full-on headache in months. This is because I'm out of Maxalt, preventative drug of the gods. More Maxalt costs $65 for 9 tabs, after insurance [Edit: I believe that means that it's $260 at full price, or $29/dose]. Bad, stupid insurance. Bad, stupid pharmaceutical companies. Anyone with advice on older migraine-shortcircuiter drugs that might be cheaper? Anyone know how drugs from Canada work?

[Edit: preventative is inaccurate. I am looking for, as xmurf describes below, a "stop migraine-in-progress widgit."]

So I'm still fragile and achy from that, and perennially stressed from grad school, but otherwise feeling well. And I found a hysterical quote from a sexual advice page on the subject of "what nice girls don't do..."

It’s just that whenever I hear a phrase like “that’s something women only do to please men,” my Dworkinite Early Warning System goes off like a fire alarm. I start ranting like a harpy and screaming things like, “You can’t tell me what to do! You can’t tell me what I like and don’t like to do in bed! You don’t know anything about anything! You’re a narrow-minded, repressed moron, you’re probably frigid, and your mother dresses you funny!” and other equally relevant and coherent pearls of wisdom. I’ll try not to do that here. I’ll be good now, I promise. I’ll be calm and rational and sensitive and just talk to you about buttfucking. -- Greta Christina

Comments

[hotpoint.livejournal.com]

I get the impression that drugs in Canada cost about as much as insurance copays here. I did a quick check on Maxalt and what appear to be its chemical relatives (Imitrex, Zomig and Amerge) all appear to be $10/pill and up from the main Canadian pharmacies.

Those pharmacies work by having your faxed-in prescription verified by a Canadian doctor, a new prescription written, and the drugs mailed to you. I have no idea whether there are issues with them getting confiscated at the border, but there are Dark Rumors about the Canadian government making sure that its citizens don't have their prescription drugs siphoned away by Americans.

Stopping a migrane is a huge quality-of-life issue. I hope you can find either a reasonable supply of that drug or something else that works well.

And that's an absolutely terrific quote! I'll go look up the column now...

[gement.livejournal.com]

First two results for Dworkinite Early Warning System pop it up, no problem. :)

I am going to ask a doc if there are cheaper options worth testing, and if not I'll probably suck it up and pay the Man. I still need to know about the Canada thing, though, because my other drug is Lamictal and I cannot mess around with that one.

It's keeping me out of the pits and precipices of stress-triggered bipolar,

it's the only one I've tried that's been effective without excessive emotional damping or side effects, and

if I skip it for a week I have to start ramping up from scratch.

[xmurf.livejournal.com]

Are you on grad-student health insurance now?

[gement.livejournal.com]

Yup. It's a 20% copay for 2nd Tier (brand name, standard drugs). 10% and 30% for generic and special tiers, respectively.