My Health Insurance Company Is Afraid I Might Jump Off A Bridge

I got a letter in the mail the other day from my health insurance company that basically said, “We are all scared shitless here because we noticed your aren’t taking your Prozac anymore.”

What.The.Fuck.

Technically I have a prescription for Prozac. It is one of the few antidepressants approved by the FDA for the treatment of severe PMS (I read a shitload of magazines and I’ve actually self diagnosed myself with PPMD which is way worse than just the regular PMS). And the reason those yahoos at my health insurance company think I’ve stopped taking it is because, per my prescribing doctor, I’m only supposed to take it for the 5-7 days before my period, not every day. So one bottle lasts a really long time. And some months I don’t have to take it at all. If I start thinking about picking up a fork and stabbing Dave in the head with it then I know I better go over to the cupboard where we store our drugs and take one of those little pills. So that’s like my litmus test for determining whether or not my PMS is indeed severe enough that I need to medicate myself immediately. If I don’t feel like stabbing Dave in the head with a fork in the 5-7 days before I get my period, then I don’t need any Prozac.

My PMS started to get really bad when I was about thirty-eight. I noticed I was becoming less tolerant, bitchier. Then it got worse and now I pretty much want to kill people during certain days of the month. I went to my gynecologist and my regular doctor. They both immediately suggested birth control pills regardless of the fact that my husband has had the “snip-snip.” Supposedly, the pill would regulate my cycle so that my hormones would be “evened out” and I wouldn’t be so psychotic and mean to people I actually love. I think my gyno and my doctor are both getting outrageous kick-backs from their pharmaceutical reps because I can think of no other reason why they would pimp these birth control pills all the time (am I right, Pfizer??) However, since I was having a lot of “fork stabbing months”, I decided to at least try the pill to see if it would help.

Remember that chick who was on the Yaz commercial and she’s sitting around with all her girlfriends at some club and they’re drinking and she’s rattling off all these Yaz statistics and then she’s all “I didn’t go to medical school for nothin'” but you know she’s not really a doctor and instead is probably a struggling actress whose resume lists a deodorant commercial and an episode of Fear Factor under “experience?” That’s the pill my doctor put me on. Within six weeks I lost the desire to ever have sex again and my boobs exploded. I have a pretty good rack to begin with so I really don’t need bigger boobs and hello? if I have no sex drive what good are big huge boobs? Dave was super bummed considering he now had to choose between a psychotic hormonally unbalanced bitch on wheels or a hormonally regulated woman with ginormous boobs and no sex drive. Plus Yaz gave me really bad headaches.

I informed my doctor about the exploding boobs and the lack of sex drive and she pretended not to have ever heard of either of these side effects. She then said if I was not willing to be on birth control pills, she could prescribe something called Sarafem which is really just Prozac that has been marketed under a different name and FDA approved for the treatment of severe PMS. And the little pills are pink. You know, for girls. She also mentioned that because my prescription was for Sarafem, and not Prozac, no one would think I was crazy which does not sound like a very doctor-y thing to say at all.

The first time I went to fill my Sarafem/Prozac prescription, the pharmacist asked me to pull up and over (like they do at McDonald’s when they don’t have enough nuggets to fill your order and you have to sit there and wait for your fast food while everyone drives around you and glares). Then, when the pharmacist came out to my car she was all “We don’t have any Prozac and we can’t fill your prescription until tomorrow” and I’m thinking, “What the fuck do you mean you don’t have any Prozac, you’re a pharmacy” (and it’s Sarafem, remember?) but I was all “Oh, that’s okay, no big deal, I can come back tomorrow” and she’s all relieved looking because I think she thought I might stab her in the head with a fork but that’s ridiculous because I don’t even keep forks in my Explorer.

I used to be envious whenever I’d hear about someone having to have a hysterectomy because I thought that maybe removing the whole “kit and caboodle” would offer some relief but apparently I am experiencing issues that are not related so much to the hardware (girly bits) but the software (the monthly hormonal shitstorm).

I will say that the Sarafem/Prozac DOES work when I take it. But it also makes me very tired and I kinda don’t give a shit about anything. I also don’t have the energy or desire to commit manslaughter though so I guess you have to take the good with the bad.

Anyway, if your periods make you bat shit crazy and evil like mine do, consider taking Sarafem/Prozac/Fluoxetine(generic Prozac) for 5-7 days each month. It does help.

But if you do accidentally/on purpose kill someone during PMS? Call me.

I will so totally testify on your behalf. Or bake you a cake with a nail file.

Whichever.

Peace out.