My first HIV prescription

Day one of the meds.

These are my pills. One months supply. They cost me $66 for the two prescription items. I can use that receipt for tax and safety net eligibility (over $1,200 a year spent on scripts sees the price drop to about $5 a script). Astonishing to think what this can cost overseas, and that the cost to the gov here is $900 for those two little bottles. 

I said to the doc as well, thank fuck I live here. These pills would be completely inaccessible to me at such an outrageous cost and I simply wouldn't take them. Instead I now have the luxury of taking them early on to take control of the HIV, rather than (as the doc described) waiting for everything to collapse and getting treated in a crisis. He says the viral load will become undetectable with them. We shall see.

The regime is quite simple; take one of each pill in the morning when I take my other usual stuff. Then after two weeks the Viramune goes up to two tablets a day (one at a time about 12 hours apart). That's it.

There were warnings in the info about operating machinery on them until you know what effect they might have on you, so I took the day off work just in case, explaining to the boss why. He was quite happy about it. Unfortunately though I haven't as yet undergone any wonderful and bizarre side effects, so I guess I'm OK for work again tomorrow. Ugh, feel a bit ripped off there! I was hoping for at least the odd hallucination, maybe even a pleasantly dizzy feeling. But no, nothing. Sheesh!

I have to go see the doc again in two weeks, as 1 in 1,000 people get a bad itchy rash with them. If that doesn't happen then it's full steam ahead. If it does happen will have to change to something else. Told me to take anti-histamines if getting itchy, which I do anyway. Still think it's freaky that my skin is allergic to cold air FFS!