For the first time in six and a half years, my second home is not work as I’m freelancing while waiting for my next job to start. It’s also not somewhere cultural or exciting – like an art house cinema, the football stadium of my favourite team or my local pub with a crowd of mates – as I would have hoped it to be in my younger years.
Since being diagnosed with MG, I
find I spend a good chunk of my time either at the doctors or the pharmacy picking up prescriptions. It’s not that I mind the time and effort – my doctor surgery is very flexible and, at the moment, I have a bit more freedom about when I can pick things up. I also could do with being more organised about bulk ordering them – another one of my 2015 resolutions.
What I did mind up until very recently was the expense. For a whole year I was totally unaware that I could get a medical exemption certificate for having MG until my tenacious mum did some research for me.
Questioning why my aunt got free medication for a thyroid problem, she did some online digging and found that I could also get my treatments for free.
My doctor, my consultant and my surgeon had failed to inform me of this and, sadly, it was never raised at any of the young persons MG meetings I attended. Perhaps I overlooked it written somewhere obvious, but how many others in the UK are doing the same right now?
I worked out that with prescriptions for 4 different drugs, bearing in mind I started them at different times, I could have saved myself at least £250 in 2014.
While I can’t say I enjoy visiting the pharmacy, I like it a lot more now that it doesn’t eat into my wages every month. Get in touch if you haven’t heard about this exemption before and I’ll send you across the information I have.
365 days of myasthenia 