I’m waiting on a call back from the nurse at my mental health clinic again.

I left a voicemail again on Wednesday, but I’m trying to not be annoying to the nurse at the same time.

When I did talk to the nurse last Friday.

I asked if I could be switched off of the Invega injection and put onto an oral medication that’s hopefully the same thing, just, oral.

The injections are hurting more and more and I can’t do many more shots.

I’m running out of areas on my body to inject into that aren’t incredibly already bruised from getting the injections.

I wish I could stay on the injections and have it be a non issue, but I fucking can’t stand one more area of my body in chronic pain.

I can’t.

I’ll do a few more months of it if I have to, but I’ll be upset about it and whine, ha!

If or when my psych NP lets me switch things up, it’s going to be a huge fucking transition for me.

I know it’s not going to be fun at all.

And there might not be anything like the Invega injection that is an oral tablet or whatever, which would suck.

But the wait on word of what the next step is, is annoying too.

I’m inpatient with this type of shit, doctor shit.

And the clinic is always so slow that I feel like they forgot about me, so I leave voicemails when I shouldn’t.

But the only person that can advocate for me is me.

No one else is going to call the nurse and keep reaching out for me.

As I was writing this, the nurse called me back again (it’s Wednesday now).

I was hoping that would happen.

I was told that the oral equivalent is Risperidone.

So I’m hoping they can get it all squared away before next week, which is when my next injection is scheduled.

I’m excited and terrified to start on it.

I was on it before and it worked pretty well, so I’m not overly concerned about it.

I’m more wondering what will happen after all the Invega wears off.

I guess it takes a couple three months or so for it to all be out.

So that’s the scariest part.

It’s now Thursday, the next day, and I ended up looking to see if my insurance covers the Paliperidone – which IS oral Invega. 

Risperidone is like a “sister” medication to Paliperidone.

So it’s similar in composition, but not the same thing.

My insurance does, for the most part, cover Paliperidone.

There’s a copay of around $44 per month it looks like.

But it is the generic of Invega and it’s a really new drug so it’s just going to get cheaper.

So I called the nurse at the clinic back after talking with her the other day and left a message asking to be switched to Paliperidone instead of Risperidone.

If he won’t let me, the Risperidone is doable I guess, I won’t be happy about it.

I know that Invega works really, really, really well, so I’ll see what Alex the psych NP has say about all of this when the nurse calls back.

Hopefully he’s not going to be annoying about this.

I don’t hear back from the clinic for days and days so i’m kinda anxious about it all.

I tried to keep myself busy and cleaned my apartment for the first time in a couple of months.

So that feels good.

I’m worn out this evening for sure.

It’s now Friday at 3:00pm and I still haven’t heard anything back from the nurse yet.

My symptoms have been alright this week.

A little bit of neighbor type voices to the left when I’m standing outside. 

Some whispers and murmurs here and there too.

I had some weird wavy visual hallucinations earlier today.

It threw me off a lot, but seems to have retreated for now.

I’m tired.

I’m going to take a nap.

– Keren