Student Loans

College was cool and all, but the crushing debt I racked up made me wonder if it was all worth it. I graduated after six years of college with around $90,000 of debt, which forced me to move back home with my parents and work several jobs (one full-time IT job and an ever growing number of tutoring jobs).

A short time ago, I got a call from one of my banks I got funding from telling me that my first payment is coming up, to which I informed them that I was still without a job and could not pay and need to use a forbearance. The loan shark representative reminded me that my loan is still very young and that it was not the wisest option for me to use one of my forbearances so early. I told that I had no other choice since I was not able to make the payment. Now this is where it get good. She responded by offering me some very helpful options: 1.) she suggested that I may want to "look around and see what I can live without" - translation: I needed to sell some of my shit (I just graduated from college, am I supposed to have superfluous items that I can sell at the first suggestion? I must have missed that memo); 2.) If I didn't have any items that have resale values, I may want to "make it a point to visit a plasma center" - translation: sell my body parts... How about this, why don't I have a kidney cut out, because I'm sure that's worth way more than my blood that I am not eligible to sell (see my previous post). I held my tongue and was able to get out of that phone call with minimal rage build-up. 

Fast-forward to ONE week later, when my cell phone rings again (cell phone is part of the family plan), this time it rings at 8:00 am on a Sunday - I don't answer... A few moments later my mom comes into my room with someone on the phone for me, it's the money-grubbing fuckwad bank rep. My mom is well aware of the story from the above paragraph, and asks me "[bank name] is on the phone, are they the ones that told you to sell your blood?" when I say yes, she gets a look on her face like she has to fart, but doesn't want to make noise, she closes my door and for tears into the rep about their poor practices. She must have scared the shit out of him, because he slipped up and revealed that suggesting options 1 and 2 above is standard practice when someone can't make a payment. I'm going to say that again, suggesting that clients sell their blood to make a payment is STANDARD PRACTICE at this bank. With that bit of tasty information, my parents contact a couple of their lawyer friends who were flabbergasted and very willing to draft a letter and send it off to said bank. I have not since heard from them. I am still appalled at this practice and am currently considering contact a few news stations, as seems to be the philosophy of many people now-a-days any publicity is good publicity. 

MS Medications

Since I haven't put up an About Me page at this point, I should probably start my first post off by saying that I have MS (this is not a blog about MS) and have had it for ten years and counting. MS drugs suck, plain and simple (almost all of them must be taken via injection or I.V.). Let me back up and say that having MS is no picnic either, but when I was diagnosed at 15 the good news was that MS is not terminal (just in-case either of my readers didn't know that). MS drugs are much like street drugs: the REALLY good ones could kill you, but the so-so ones are like thinking about Bruce Valance during sex - they're only delaying the inevitable (if at all).

The real purpose for this post is that I had an MRI recently and it turns out that I have two new lesions and one of my old ones has grown (yay for progression!), so my neurologist(s) think it's time to look at switching to one of the newer, more promising drugs out (I will not be naming them - for fear of legal action). The first one that was suggested to me (call it A), has shown amazing results in very serious cases. You may be saying to yourself "Well Cole, what are you bitching about? That sounds like a great option!" WRONG! This drug, while restoring cognitive function and/or strengthening gait, also has a wee problem - that problem going by the name PML. Which - for those of you that are too lazy to read that Wiki page - is a rare and usually fatal disease that likes to feast on the white matter of the host's brain. About 1 in 1000 people who take A develop a mild case of death, so for me that is right out!

The second drug (I will refer to it as My-Crushed-Hopes) is the very first pill for MS!!!! And after having to endure injecting 20mg of my current med into my fat and then the 20-30 minutes of ignoring the evolution of burning to itching at the shot site afterwards (plus that one time I stopped breathing after a dose), a pill was a godsend. This drug is called an immuno-suppressant, which you should be able to gather from the name means that it suppresses the immune system. As a result of this type of drug, common side effects are increased susceptibility to infections - so much so that during trials two people died of neuro-herpes. As well as a curious occurrence of basal-cell carcinoma, which A also has.

So these were the two drugs that my doctor and his staff suggest I take a serious look at, to which I said: "What happened to MS NOT being terminal"... I got no answer to that question. So clearly, that happy caveat of this disease not going to kill me any faster than my cell phone was more of an optimistic estimation... well played, God. But this story doesn't have a bitter and slightly blasphemous ending; apparently, there is a NEW drug on the market that is also a pill, but doesn't have any of those nasty side-effects. So instead of thinking of good ol'Bruce I may just being able to enjoy the ride. To be continued....