When I first began injecting myself in the leg with harsh, genetically-engineered chemicals, I was terrified. I still am. Not of the shot, but of the drugs going into my body to help manage my Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS).
Biologics, a type of specialty medication made from living cells and tissues, come with potential side effects like cancer, tuberculosis, and heart disease. When I first read the drug pamphlet, the dangers written in margins and between the fine print triggered my first post-diagnosis breakdown. I was 26, had been seriously ill just once in my life, and was finding my groove in the adult world. This was the first of many blubbering, head-throbbing, “Why the hell me?” temper tantrums that left me in a trembling blob on my bed.
What could possibly convince me to push this harsh medication through my body – maybe for the rest of my life? Logic and realism prevailed over emotions, and statistics were drowned out by my need to swallow the pill, so to speak. Above that consuming fear was a desire to have a semblance of my former life back, and this medication promised that possibility.
A week later, I sat in one corner of a large room with a nurse, shaking as I learned how to give myself a shot. She watched as I held my breath and pushed my thumb in and out, quickly, to trigger my first dose. My life flashed before my eyes and I cried precisely two silent tears – what had I done? Certainly now I would die of sudden-onset cancer, be ripped from life by tuberculosis, or my heart would fail in my sleep (if I was lucky). The contradictory decision to sustain life by injecting what I saw as a death-threat substance grabbed me with icy, bony fingers and shook me, hard.
The course of my life was now officially altered. I had joined the ranks of being specialized-medicine patient. I had taken the red pill.
BeingCharis 