Medication Moves Part III

16/11/25 13:33

Over the last few years I’ve seen several consultants, doctors and nurses with respect to the MS. This most recent one last week was the consultant who delivered the original diagnosis to me. There has been a change of treatment from Copaxone to Tecfidera in that time as further developments came. Not sure whether he was involved in the decision making process for that change or not. In any case after talking with me and going through my notes he wondered whether at this point in the illness (and with my age) it may be worth changing to a third drug. I’d never heard of it. It is stronger and works in a different way. It kinda resets your white blood cells to make them less likely to go after your myelin (okay I’m paraphrasing it a lot there). You only take five days of tablets one month (on consecutive days) then another five days the following month. And that’s repeated the next year. In theory that may be the only treatment needed for many years.

The guidance on prescribing it (Mavenclad/Cladribine) has changed so it may not have been an option for very long. It is horrendously expensive but has the advantage of not requiring ongoing treatment and daily tablets for the rest of your life (and the regular palaver of organising and waiting for the monthly deliveries of said tablets etc)—there’s some limited blood monitoring (white blood cell monitoring) around the first couple of months of taking the Cladribine but not much else.

I’ve ten days or so left to think about it, before talking to an MS Nurse again. But at the moment I’m minded to go for it. I’ll do some further research first of course. But twenty days of taking tablets over 13 months is better than 365 days a year for ever, ain’t it?

Watch this space.

- About Cladribine on the MS Society website -