feathers intro

[Sandra]

Feather

I am on Otezla (Apremilast).

I'm afraid Jim and Fred are right, they like you to have tried other first line treatments before prescribing Otezla but no harm in asking.

I am extremely lucky, my consultant applied for this on liscence as it had not been approved by NICE 4months ago. I call this my 'wonder drug'. I had quite severe psoriasis, covering the majority of my body, except my lower back and tummy, but it had begun to appear there just before the start of my Otezla treatment. 4 months later and I am over 90% clear!

It does have side effects, the most common being nausea and diarrhoea, which initially can be horrendous, but in my case after a few weeks, it certainly settled down. Eating either before or after taking it helps lessen the nausea. Fred is right again, Otezla is not a cure, I will have to take it for life, but as yet it isn't so new they do not know what the long term side effects will be. However my quality of life has improved so much, I'm happy to be a guinea pig!

Jim is also right about speaking to your dermatologist, and explaining exactly how you feel, don't put a grave face on, tell him/her how it affects your daily life. I was encouraged to do this by Jim and others on this forum and also took with me a copy of the NICE guidelines also supplied by this forum. It was suprising the difference this made to the discussion with my consultant.

Good luck with it.

Sandra