I started on Humira in April ’09.

In May of that year, I had a change in insurance (for one month, talk about issues) and my regular birth control pill was no longer covered.  So, I switched to a generic brand ~ no big deal, really.. but I did like the name brand I was taking.  The name brand was one where you take the pill for 24 days, have a really light short period of 4 days and start over.  No generics of that sort yet.

I switched to the generic pill and started having issues with break-thru bleeding… and if I skipped a pill, I could cross off the rest of the month – I’d have break-thru bleeding continually.  None of it was heavy, but it was enough that I couldn’t ignore it either.

The humira, on the other hand, was working wonderfully for my crohn’s disease issues.  The seemingly only issue I was having was slight irritation at the injection site, not uncommon.  Doctor prescribed cream that helped with itching (the itching was mad), and I started holding ice on the injection site after I’d given myself the injection, instead of just before-hand.

The bleeding I was dealing with however, got worse and worse.  After 4 months or so, I quit the birth control pill altogether, thinking my body just needed time to get back to normal.  I was dragging my feet to do anything about it.  I kept thinking it’d stop soon.  I would periodically google for keywords regarding the situation… and got pretty bummed that it looked like my options were limited (ablation, hysterectomy, etc) and none of them sounded like something I wanted to have done, at least yet.  I also didn’t want to see an OBGYN.  I had no need of an OB (I’m done with having babies) and it always seems many OBGYN’s are most active in the OB part of their careers.  I wanted a specialist for the GYN part.  By January of  ’10, I was having continual bleeding, and only a couple of days of nothing, every 6-8 weeks.

Yes, really, this relates to the Humira.

In April ’10, I was really putting a lot of thought into how much of these drugs we take, how often.  I decided to skip a month of the humira.  Rather, instead of injecting twice a month, I’d just do it once a month.  I know, who am I to play doctor?

After almost the whole month, I noticed I was getting my first real break in menstrual flow since the start of those problems a year ago… And then it clicked.  So after my “trial” month of Humira, I decided to just go as long as I could without an injection.  I made it almost two months (less one week) between injections, before my gut was saying “do something soon, please!”… and guess what, I had a “normal” period during that time and no break-thru bleeding, spotting, or otherwise.

I googled this issues and found Humira can cause issues with women’s cycle – it can cause heavy bleeding, continual bleeding and, I think, lack of … but I will have to re-search again, as I just had to reformat my computer and lost those notes (shame on me for not taking better care with my bookmarks).

No, I haven’t been back to my doctor yet.

Now, I’m thinking I am going to have to and soon.  I’ve noticed the past two weeks I’ve been itchy, like my arms (Inside upper arm, near elbows) and my thighs (I do injection into belly)… No rash that I can see, but the itching is definitely getting worse.  So much so, that today I took a Benadryl to help.

Aggh.  I itch.  And I just don’t know about Humira at all any more.  Heck, I don’t know about any of the medications any more.  It’s so frustrating.

I’m making the switch from Remicade to Humira for my crohn’s disease.

The muscle aches, which we attributed to an allergic reaction to Remicade, went away mostly.  However, after my 3rd Remicade treatment, the achey joints returned (maybe some slight muscle pain, but mostly just joints).  It was my elbows, fingers and wrists, ankles and knees.  For the most part, after about 5 weeks, all that remains of the aches are one elbow and both knees – consistently anyway.

Doctor today seemed like he was thinking about suggesting another round of Remicade… but then just said, lets just do Humira, I think that’s what we should do… Are you ok with it?  Oh, yes.  Definitely ok with it.  I certainly don’t want to feel these aches and pains… not feeling confident to carry laundry up from the basement for fear my knees will give out.. or carrying a couple bags of groceries makes my arms feel like they’ll fall off.. while I am happy to not have the abdominal pain, I didn’t plan to trade it for other pain.

The tail bone pain I was feeling before the holidays is completely gone. I actually wouldn’t have given it any thought, except he asked about it today.  So, I’m assuming the abscess was small and insignificant enough it just went away.

So, humira.  I will go to the doctors office and a nurse will show me how to do it.. from then, I will adminster the shots myself at home.  They assured me it’s easy to do – but I also don’t want to mess it up, as it’s so expensive.  No pressure.  But really, I think giving myself a shot will be a cake walk compared to going and sitting for hours at the hospital while they give me an iv of remicade.. yeah, I really don’t mind the switch.

Now, keeping fingers crossed Doc can push the change through my insurance.