No Humor In Humira

To my son Tommy,

Last night, your mother started a new drug regimen for her crohn's disease.  This drug is called Humira and it is serious stuff.  But then again crohns is a serious disease.

Humira is an injectable and it comes in one of those automated needle cartridges that you press a button/plunger and a click sounds as it shoots the needle in your leg or wherever you have to do the injection.  Last night your mother had to do four of these.  The anticipation and then the sound is horrible on this and I am not sure why this auto shot system is better.  Certainly for your mom, who is training to be a nurse, a basic syringe would work best. 

On her first of the four shots, it took nearly thirty minutes for her to get the nerve to do it.  I had hoped that once she did it, she would see it was nothing and the next one would come much quicker.  Seeing her face after she depressed plunger, I knew that my hopes were not going to come true.  Evidently this is no easy shot and painful to take and my heart sank knowing she had three more shots to go.  Her next one went worse, and she jerked and winced from the pain not getting a full dose.  I ended up having to do the next two.  She has to do her next follow up dose in fifteen days.

We hope this Humira is the answer and can get a handle on your mom's crohns.  We do know that moving to this new therapy will lessen the amount of medication she is on.  She will be able to drop about four current pills with this one shot.  The less medications, the less chance for all the side effects that go with the meds.  Of course Humira has plenty of side effect possibilities as well.  As I said earlier, this stuff is no joke.

Sometimes in life the cure or the solution hurts.  Shots hurt, side effects suck, some medicines sting, and they are all supposed to help you in the long run.  This concept bleeds over into most every part of life.  In finance, you have to make some hard painful choices and sacrifices to get yourself and keep yourself out of debt.  In love,  you will have to end some relationships in your life and it will break your heart and give you pain.  In parenting, disciplining your child and having him look up at you with those hateful eyes as if to say "why are you doing this to me?  why am I being forced to [insert nasty chore here such as clean, eat, go to school, etc] you mean person you?" and no amount of understanding that it is for his own future good can really lessen the heartache of that moment.  Yeah the cure sometimes hurts.  And unfortunately we have to just suck it up and do it.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo