I had a particularly sucky weekend (yes, that's a technical term). My right heel suddenly decided (for no reason that I could tell) to develop gout-like symptoms - dull, throbbing pain that sharped into "Ninjas are attacking your foot" territory if I tried to put any weight on it. I mean - I know from pain, I have arthritis so advanced that I am intimately aware of the various federal regulations on Percoset, but this was the kind of pain that drains everything out of you - to the point where you end up crying when you make it to the bathroom, but then realize you're going to have to go through the whole process again just to get out of there. A couple of nights where it hurt too badly to sleep because I couldn't find a position where the foot would stop throbbing. Fortunately, it is clearing up just as suddenly as it occurred - because my body is a sadistic little bitch, but it knows it can only push me so far.
So, the foot is clearing up - and now, I've got stiffness and throbbing in the second and third fingers of my left hand. What the hell - I'll take that. All it really affects is my typing speed. But in the process of surviving the weekend, I've developed a mad hate (I had to push the anger and frustration somewhere) for cancer medication advertisers. I'm not talking about the snake oil salesmen who claim that they can use grapefruit juice extract instead of chemotherapy - I already condemned those bastards to hell a lot time ago. And I am totally behind the actual researchers who are trying to fight cancer - they're fighting the good fight and need all the support they can get. No, I'm talking about the assholes who decided that putting ads on the air for Optivo (or a couple of other meds - not just trying to single anyone out here) was a good use of time and money that could be spent on... say... research and development? Or making sure that the cancer drugs don't bankrupt someone on their way out of this mortal coil?
A cancer diagnosis is a peculiarly personal thing - none of us have the same cancer. But trust me - if you have a potentially life extending (note that these meds aren't saying they'll save your life, just extend it a little) medication, we'll find out about it. And frankly, it should be from a solid medical source, not from a 90 second ad on Rachel Maddow - I don't need to get my medical clues between yelling at Trump and questioning Congress. All you're doing here is jacking up the price, which at $150K per initial injection and then $14K per month after that, does not need jacking up. You're also just reminding those patients who do not fit the very specific criteria for this particular med that no, there's nothing out there for them. And while it's interesting to listen to the list of side effects (which, by the way, can include your body randomly attacking various organs even after you go off the drug - oh, and death), I would honestly rather sit through Vince and his Sham-Wow commercial for the nine billionth time (and I hate Vince) than ever see your soft-focused jazz-enhanced nonsense ever again.
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