Deja Vu - Farewell All Over Again

It has been a while since my last post, and I apologize for that.  This post is another farewell, but this time to Simponi www.simponi.com. After four injections, there was absolutely no improvement in my symptoms; not even a small reduction in fatigue, swelling or stiffness. As a matter of fact I have been in more pain and more fatigued.  (Plus that auto-inject pen was not easy to operate). So, my rheumy and I decided that it didn't make sense to continue taking the Simponi if there were no benefits. 

Honestly, I hadn't really expected any improvement (perhaps that was the wrong attitude from the beginning) since Simponi is a TNF (tumor necrosis factor-alpha blocker) blocker like Humira www.humira.com, which plateaued and was not an effective treatment for me.  My rheumy tried Simponi because he states that sometimes patients who have used a TNF blocker in the past will have better results the second time around.

So now, what course of action do we take?  There is a drug study for another IL-6 biologic and we decided since I had such positive results on Actemra www.actemra.com which is also an IL-6 biologic, I would be enrolled in the study.  For the next three months I cannot take any biologic drug while we wait for the Simponi to completely leave my body. Yikes!! this looks like a scary place to be (again!). Over the past 1 1/2 years my life has been a series of deja vu moments from going months with a biologic to saying farewell to one biologic after another. 

I am so ready for this roller coaster to stop because I WANT OUT OF THIS INSANITY!!!!!!