The blessing and burden of Aimovig

Most people have heard my Aimovig story: completely debilitated to completely functional 6 days after the first dose, I am the definition of super-responder.

Aimovig is one of four new calcitonin gene related peptide antagonists, which we tend to refer to as just ‘CGRPs’. These are the first medications that break the trigger sequence. Aimovig works a little differently to Ajovy, Emgality and Vyepti – it locks the CGRP receptor rather than the CGRP ligand. I don’t really care, because it’s brilliant and it works, gimme gimme.

Unfortunately, it’s not on the PBS (pharmaceutical benefits scheme, think of it as nationalised insurance that makes medications affordable in Australia). IT’s not going to be on the PBS, because they tried and failed three time to get it past the independent committee that decides if it will be. A similar fight has happened in the UK. They found the drug works, and is cost effective, but there’s too many people living with migraine and they don’t wanna pay.

That puts people like me in an absolutely horrid position. I can’t function without it and I don’t want to give it up. With this medication, I can work, I can drive, I can take care of myself. Without it, I can’t do any of those things. I can barely get out of bed.

But it costs, even with the discount offer, $695 every 4 weeks. And I don’t have it. I’ve been trying to go back to work for a while now – something I thought may have been easier with the completion of my PhD last week – but y’know, pandemic.

So I’m now in a really tough spot: do I beg and borrow the money for Aimovig in the hope I get a job soon? Or do I accept that I may not find a job for a while, and it is not reasonable to keep getting myself into further debt I may not ever be able to repay, and go back to the dark until I get a job that pays enough money to cover the bill?

The blessing of Aimovig is that it gives me back my life. The burden of Aimovig is that my entire life has become about paying for the drug.

This is not how it’s supposed to work in Australia.