I’d like to give it a whirl and have the spirometry test on the menu for Tuesday,3/22 w/the doc on 04/11. I poked around online and the vast majority of information seems to be through afrezza.com which is labeled as being through Sanofi although I thought they’d broken up. I’ve had reasonable luck with my pump, just calling the manufacturer and letting them do the gruntwork of nagging my insurance company and then simply reporting back when the deal is done.
Does anyone have any tips for what’s going on with the distribution of Afrezza these days? I’ll do a separate topic in a bit about the issue of what to do about basal…eeek!!
I think at this point it’s still being distributed by sanofi but not for much longer. I wouldn’t worry about it too much as long as it shows up at the pharmacy when it’s supposed to. I’m not sure if sanofi is still offering the discount cards or not but that’s worth looking into.
I was able to try some from a friend! In a typically long story, I had wings and a couple of drinks with one friend. While the menu said the wings were breaded, so I pumped for 30G of carbs but they turned out not to be breaded. Stlll tasty, whatever, I had a Newcastle Brown Ale for a few extra carbs.
Then some wandering around and arrived at the dinner spot,a bit low 60, still with a couple units IOB. So I administered a very tasty margarita, usually would blow the hell out of it. We ordered food, 67, then a 62, eek the food’s on the way and I’m low, munch some bread. Then the carbs start unloading, 95, 107 (delta 12 mg/ DL…not the best sign with more chow on the way!) so my buddy says “have a puff” and I did and it stopped it in it’s tracks. They suggested that was probably 1U so I then bolused for dinner and subtracted the Afrezza on board. My BG topped out at 119 and simply hovered there, tailing off slowly with the combo. I was really impressed!!
I’ve actually done a reverse experiment the last few weeks by taking a break from it to see if it was actually making my life that much easier… I can assure you, it has…
I don’t even bother to carb count or apply carb ratios… None of that stuff seems to matter with afrezza, it truly is a game changer
By this, you mean you just watch your short-term bg trends and administer in incremental doses as needed, sort of winging it based on experience? I get that, but with such quick onset, one would think hypo risk would also be elevated – but reading your and other comments on this forum it really doesn’t seem to be much of an issue. Why is that?
I received my last order in December through Medco. It delivered just before news broke with Sanofi canceling the agreement. I suspect there’s still plenty of supply as demand has been dampened in part due to weak promotion.
I’m using Afrezza almost every day for corrections. If I’m over 200, I’ll do 4 units of Afrezza and 1 unit IM. Consistently drops me 100 points in 60-90 minutes.
all those CGM lines dont lie. Matt has some interesting things to say as to why it just hovered there - Afrezza simulates first phase insulin … enjoy reading…
The best I can explain is that there is just a tremendous margin of dosing error… I’ve tried to explain it quite a lot on here and have come to the conclusion that it’s just not possible to explain unless the people you’re talking to have seen it first hand in real life.
The one place afrezza does struggle with is with very high fat meals because they digest so slow…
Timing is much more important than dose amount with afrezza, and optimal timing does vary with different types of meals… It’s just a whole different ballgame than injected insulin and comparing lessons learned with injected bolus don’t really apply well…
I do not think there is increased hypo risk, actually I’m not sure afrezza has ever anywhere in the world caused a single “serious” hypo… It’s just gone from your system too fast for that to happen it seems to me. it requires about 1/10 the effort in order to maintain tight control than with injected.
Hmm, it sounds like it will be an adventure tracking it down. I’ll call the PrimeMail or PrimeTheraputics on Monday and see what they have to say about the availability.
@acidrock23 I am so happy you are looking into this! I still get my Afrezza form the same pharmacy I have been and should be able to do so until July.
A 4 cartridge lowers me about the same as 1.5 units of humalog. Everyone is different on this however. I have heard an 8 unit cartridge lowers about the equivalent to 3 units of humalog. This has not been the case with extreme IR days or yucky uber high blood sugars. A very high blood sugar, over 200, fights Afrezza in the same way it battles humalog for me.
@acidrock23 Be sure and download the Afrezza Savings card at Afrezza.com and it should only cost 30 bucks out of pocket for the first year!
Cheers to Puffin!
A 4u will drop me from 200+ to in-range within moments…
I gave up on trying to compare to injected bolus… A lot of people report that it keeps blood sugar from rising much more effectively than it corrects high levels. I honestly do t even put much if any thought into it any more… If I’m eating a carby meal I’ll snort 8 about 20 min after I start eating, with a low carb meal I’ll do 4… If I end up elevated st 2 hours, which is rare for me, I’ll snort another 4… That’s about as much as I analyze it nowadays… And my levels are pretty much normal all the time. My last a1c was 5.2…
I’m glad AR is trying it too! I had gotten tired of raving about it because it just seemed like nobody cared to hear it.
@acidrock23 Any updates on your insurance coverage situation? United Healthcare has categorically denied me, citing “plan exclusion.” A little poking around online seems to indicate that exceptions are only granted for people who are visually impaired or have severe & documented fear of needles. I’m not too invested in fighting it because so far I’ve taken 6 out of 60 free samples I got with the promise of more from my doctor- that’s over the span of 2 weeks. However I am planning to do a little investigating with cash prices at local pharmacies, I gather the savings card can knock $150 off the price. I’ll let you know what I find out. If there’s any chance of it not being distributed in the near future, I’d just as soon shell out for a box or two and stash it.
acidrock23, I just want to add how very much I appreciate the correct grammar and spelling you used in the title of this topic. Seriously, bad grammar and spelling errors are the visual equivalents of someone scraping their fingernails down a chalkboard to me. May I rot in Hell for every spelling and grammar error I’ve ever made or may make in the future…
There are often more than one route to preauthorizarion. I encountered that bs through Caremark about that being their criteria for authorization. A little research also let me to discover that the health plan administrator at my employer had the absolute authority to preauthorize any medication with or without following caremark’s guidance (since she’s a trustee of the plan that’s actually paying for it). I called her and she was happy to preauthorize it—
Ps @acidrock23 I just filled a script at Safeway pharmacy. No troubles.
Well I do all my posting with an iPhone, so grammar, spelling and auto-correct errors are almost unavoidable. I think I generally get my point across reasonably well though, considering I’m typing with my thumbs.
Sam19, rest assured that the overwhelmingly vast majority of your posts do not cause me to cringe, shudder, gnash my teeth, and/or piteously and softly moan in anguish.
LOL, I probably do typos as often as anyone but thanks @rgcainmd!
No updates on my insurance situation. I got the bad news from Prime Mail, their sinister pharmaceutical agent, on like Tuesday and the movers came Wednesday at 9:15 or so and were not done unloading the last truck until 8:00ish, Lou Malnati’s pizza (thin crust, Sausage & Ghiardinhera, I probably did ok bg-wise…) but I have like 8 of my 60 samples left because, like Kurt Kobain, I’m a gobbler. I still like having it. It was very handy on Saturday,30 mile bike ride with a new sensor, we left at 9:00 and Afrezza made it possible to puff at 8:00 w/ 6:00 AM insertion and eat cereal without a spike to blast off!
I’ve read into it in my limited free time and it seems the path to take is to call your employer, and have them request an update to the formulary. The ■■■■■■ customer service person @ the BCBS insurer was tossing around “it’s not in the formulary so there’s no appeal and, uh, nothing”. The perhaps amusing “Huis Clos” aspect of this is that I’m insured through my wife’s employer. I will probably have my wife call, maybe a three-way call w/ me so she can do the insurance stuff and I can do the diabetes stuff? Unfortunately, she sort of runs the place and is super busy.
The garbage men come Thursday, which will help de-clutter the new house a lot and maybe we can chat about this. And my new insulin pump comes tomorrow too…it never stops!!
Hm, interesting about the plan administrator. I wouldn’t have known that. I am insured through the healthcare Marketplace, an ACA plan, so I am not sure who would fill that role, if anyone. My job does not offer insurance. My plan is pretty good otherwise but the good news is, there’s always the option to switch at the new year, if I need to.
I’m sure there is some way to fight it but I’m not sure if it’s worth the time and effort for me, personally. I’m not planning, at this time, to take Afrezza on a daily basis or in place of my pump boluses – more on an as-needed basis. I feel like I only have a limited reserve of insurance-fighting energy and this is probably not what I want to spend it on, or ask my endo to spend on my behalf. I’ll see how I can get by with samples (endo and CDE have promised as many samples as I need/they can provide) and possibly supplementing with discounted cash pay for now, if that turns out to be an option.
@acidrock23, let us know how that call goes… sounds like fun.
