Someone told me that the patent for Asacol is coming up soon, which means that the drug will be available to generic companies which obviously, is a big loss for P&G so they decided to try and market this new kind of Asacol tablet to extend their patent and hopefully get more money out of us. It's funny because the drug in the Asacol HD is exactly the same as the drug in regular Azacol (mesalamine) but at a different dosage per tab (800 mg vs 400mg) and on the box for Asacol HD it says 'not bio-equivalent to Asacol', so you can't just take double the amount of Asacol pills to get the HD effect. Apparently. I'm not a doctor so what do I know, I just smell something fishy.
So far I'm really not seeing any kind of difference, apart from the pill shells mysteriously turning up in the toilet bowl every morning. That's normal because the outside is made from some kind of indestructible acrylic that only degrades enough on the outside for the inside to be dispersed in the colon.
I'm really not sure if it's because I'm paying more attention to my symptoms that I'm noticing more things...or if it's because I have more symptoms. I had actual bend-over-ouch! cramping because of gas in my colon for the first time in years the other day. I've also been experiencing some dizziness which could be due to anemia. My follow up with the GI is in a few weeks so we'll see what he says about that.
I haven't taken the discount card to the pharmacy yet because I haven't had time to think about it with everything that's been going on in my final semester but I'm hoping that the discount card is not a one time only thing and that I can use it again.
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