kesimpta prescription update

The newest plot twist is that I got a phone call this morning from someone who said she was calling from the specialty pharmacy, that the copay was the same large amount they told me yesterday, and would I be interested in assistance paying that? When I said yes, it turned out the process from there is that she sends a message to someone, who will look into it and get back to me. (Last year, the drug company was covering my much smaller copays, but that program explicitly excludes Medicare.)

When I mentioned the call to Cattitude, he suggested I check to make sure it's legit. The drug company's website had nothing relevant. I then tried calling the pharmacy and got nothing useful, so I opened another online chat. The agent confirmed that this is a real thing, with the disadvantage that it can take a while. She said they have a team whose job is to look for foundation or other grants that might help, and then help me apply if they find anything. I'm on that team's list of patients to try to find help for, but there's a queue.

The current plan is that the delivery has been rescheduled for Saturday, and if I don't hear from them by Friday I'll postpone it a few more days. I'm not sure how long I should leave this for, and I may call the MS nurse and ask how long it's reasonable to wait for the next dose. (I think the most recent dose was Dec. 13th, because that was my last reminder in Google calendar, so I've got a couple of weeks, maybe more.)

I had been thinking that Kesimpta costs enough that I will definitely hit the annual out-of-pocket maximum, and that it doesn't matter much whether I hit that number in February or later in the year, but this might keep my total prescription drug costs for the year below the cap.

Pasting in part of the conversation with the chat agent:

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heard back from Carmen about C. diff.

I just talked to Carmen, and apparently I missed a voice mail last night, after the infectious disease specialist returned her call almost immediately.

The infectious disease specialist advised her to get another stool sample to culture for C. diff, and if the bad bacteria are still there, a course of vancomycin. The specialist also said that sometimes the symptoms continue for a while after the infection is gone, and that's more common in immune-suppressed patients. So, if I test negative, I will ask if they can estimate how long "a while" is likely to be. Either way, for now, I should keep taking the probiotics, because "it can't hurt."

So, I, or Cattitude or Adrian, will be going to the doctor's office tomorrow to get another sampling kit. I asked Carmen how long it was likely to take for them to get results, and she said 48 hours, which means the results will probably come back this weekend or early next week.

two cool animal videos

Putting this here partly so I can find them again:

Cricket frogs crossing water: The motion has previously been called "skittering" along the water surface. Video shows that it's similar to what porpoises do. The frogs repeatedly leap out of the water and submerging again, moving forward with each leap (via conuly)


Dragonfly acrobatics: some dragonflies dunk themselves in the water to cool off. They submerge briefly, then fly vertically upwards, and do rapid loop-the-loops to dry off (via andrewducker; paywalled)