Stalking Byetta

That took still more calls to convince me that my health insurance company will cover Byetta.
That issue resolved, I next made an appointment with my doctor to get a prescription.

Unfortunately, he had never heard of Byetta. And even after researching it, he declined to give me a prescription.

Byetta is new. It has only been generally available since last summer. So it is understandable that the medical profession isn’t familiar with it.

Since I understand that, I did the only reasonable thing when my doctor wouldn’t prescribe Byetta. I fired him.

Next, I set up appointments to see another primary care physician and an endocrinologist. But neither could see me for more than six weeks.

I hated to wait that long to start on Byetta, but there didn’t seem to be any choice. Then my salvation came in the form of an email from Jeffry N. Gerber, M.D.

He wrote to tell me that he is a family doctor located south of Denver and that he had just linked my website on his. Later, he wrote that he had just met with the Byetta rep because he was anxious to start many of his patients on it. He wrote, “You can be the first, if you wish.”

I wished. Even though his office is almost an hour away on the far side of Denver from my home in Boulder, I made an appointment to see him the next weekday. I not only got my prescription but a free 5 mcg pen that the Byetta rep had left with him. I took my first shot of Byetta on Monday night.

It’s only a few days that I have been using Byetta, so I don’t know yet if I will be the thin young man I once was. But I do know that it’s much easier to inject it than to do a fingerstick test, and I hardly feel it. My blood glucose levels, often in the 80s and 90s, are better than they ever were. And while the only real nausea I felt was for the first three hours after my first shot of Byetta, my appetite is satisfied on much less food.

People talk about going on a particular medicine. But I have gone to Byetta, a drug that I believe will change my life. So don’t be surprised if you see more about Byetta here.