Today I went to see my GP about getting my Mounjaro prescription refilled and possibly “upgraded”. In case you don’t know, they start you off at the lowest dosage (2.5 mg) which is supposed to get your body used to the medication without too many side effects. Then the usual thing is to up the dosage to 5 mg and see how you get on with that. If you are losing weight at a reasonable rate then you stay where you are, but if you need more (of whatever it is this thing does) then your dose can be steadily increased up to what sounds to me like a whopping 15 mg dose. Each pen holds four doses and the higher the dosage, the higher the price.

At 208€ per 4-dose pen, the 2.5 mg dose is already too expensive for me, especially as this is meant to be a long-term treatment. So I was going to ask my GP if she thought I could stay with the initial dosage and see how I go, but it turned out my GP wasn’t there (on holiday?) and I ended up seeing someone new. Oh well. You may recall that when my old GP (and friend) Agustín retired just after Covid lockdown his replacement was (I’m sorry but she was) a really horrible woman who seemed miserable at her job. She didn’t listen to me at all, sent me for treatment I never asked for or wanted, like fucking bariatric surgery, without informing me. I was thinking about changing clinics when one day I went to an appointment and Heartless GP was gone and there was a new doctor there. Another woman, but this time a nice one. Well, I mean she was a bit cold and clinical but she did get things done, things I asked for. So I have been more or less happy with Nice GP though I can’t actually talk to her (I’ve tried). Anyhow, then today…

Another woman. I still don’t know if she is now my new GP or if Nice GP is on holiday, but the first thing she did was apologise for taking another patient ahead of me saying she had seen me in the waiting room but it looked like I was waiting for someone else (well I was, so I wasn’t sitting outside her door) but no harm done. Then I sat down and told her that I was there for a new prescription but wasn’t sure if I should continue with the original 2.5 mg dose because it seemed everyone switched to 5 mg after the first month. But I’d already lost 2.5 kilos in three weeks and I thought that was a good rate of weight loss (slow but sure), and she agreed. I told her that price was a factor and, indeed, forking out 208€ a month was probably better motivation and more effective than whatever the medication was doing. And she laughed. SHE LAUGHED. Omg. Then she showed me the price chart above and said… you know “hay una trampa” (there’s a trick) and I was all ears.

Then she leaned in and said that when they were first showing them this new medication and how it worked they also showed them this “trampa” which was this. Say, like me, you are paying 208€ for four 25 mg doses a month. That is what that pen is going to always cost. BUT… if you bought the 5 mg one at 272€ and only took a half dose each time then it would last twice as long and cost 136€ per month. And I was like… whaaat? Even better if you go for the 10 mg one, which would last for four months at 90€ a month. I was a bit overwhelmed. First of all, that Mounjaro pen took a while to master (I have it down now, can administer it without needing the video 😅) but cutting the dose? Tricky. New Fab GP said she didn’t know how all the different pens actually worked, saying they could explain it to me at the farmacia, but I was unsure. So we agreed that I would continue on the 2.5 mg dose for another month while I did more research on this. So far everything on google is saying I SHOULD NOT do this, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Meanwhile, we talked about how my weight gain happened after all that chemo (2008-2009), followed directly by menopause and, well, just getting older, and she’s the first doctor has agreed that chemo can seriously affect metabolism. She said another benefit of Mounjaro is that it helps not only with blood sugar levels and lowering appetite, but it also metabolically “rebalances” your body. Hmmm. I dunno about that but I do know I’ll stick with it for now because I really really want a new knee.