It is with great pride that we present to you… Dress.
It’s all dark blue and velvet and sequins and glitter, at once as deep as the ocean and as clear as the night sky—just plain “Fantastic!” (That’s what the little fashion consultant friend texted when we looked lovingly at the dressing room photo at Macy’s.)
The shocking part is not only the $35 price tag on this adorable dress (how we love the Macy’s sale racks), but the little one we thought would wear an oversized t-shirt, sweat shorts, and baseball cap for the rest of the day, actually wanted to wear it to a winter formal.
Here we are, folks, a full year into the tiny GLP-1 journey toward a healthier existence, and we’re seeing bright glimpses of the confidence that losing 25 pounds can foster. Thank you for following up and asking how he is doing. There are more twists and turns than we expect, and an ever-changing menu of drugs and, thankfully, increasingly affordable options.
It was a much longer odyssey than at least I had originally – and naively – anticipated. But we have learned a lot and continue to learn a lot, and hope that our experiences will help others on the same path.
Other options
First, let’s talk about drugs and prices.
Unfortunately, at least from our wallet’s perspective, our insurance doesn’t cover much for weight loss drugs. When Little’s doctor prescribed Ozympic — a GLP-1 drug officially used for diabetics — it cost $714 a month, out-of-pocket. ouch
Early shots also suffered. This was unfamiliar territory for our ancestral species; Four doses are in an Ozympic pen, and you attach a new needle for injection each week. At the time of the shot there was a storm and a drag. We’ve gotten good at it—icing the area for 15 minutes before the shot, leaving an ice pack on the skin for distraction during the jab—and it should be a routine.
You grow slowly on Ozympic, but the cost is the same whether you take the 0.25 mg dose or the 2 mg dose. She had no side effects and her appetite decreased, but not as dramatically as I (unintentionally) expected. She was encouraged to eat healthy and exercise more – “Mom, can we go to the gym?” There’s a phrase that amazes me every time I hear it—and she was very comfortable in her skin after shedding the first 20 pounds, which took about seven months.
In October, there was a GLP-1 earthquake: Costco started selling Ozympic for $499 a month. This was a big help!
And in October, it was Halloween. It was a huge pain!
Halloween, in these parts, is the start of pick-on-the-pound season, try as we might to behave. It’s a long, straight shot to hell, starting with almond nuts and milkshakes, followed by a turkey, stuffing and sweet potato sausage bake and, on the last leg, by lasagna and apple pie and chocolate chip cookies for Santa. We cry on New Year’s Day, resolving to reverse the carnage.
New drugs
We asked Little Doctor about changing to Zipbound/Monjaro. Their active ingredient, terzapatide, targets two hormones involved in appetite and blood sugar regulation (GLP-1 and GIP), while Vigovi/Ozempic semaglutide targets only one (GLP-1).
In a direct “head-to-head” study, people on Zepbound lost an average of 20.2% of their body weight over 72 weeks, while those on Vigoway lost 13.7%.
But alas! Zepbound/Mounjaro is only approved for people 18 years of age and older. It’s less than 15.
So her doctor switched her prescription from Ozympic to Vigoi. They are the same drug – semaglutide – but Vigovi is approved for weight loss and the highest dose is 2.4 mg, while Ozempic is approved for diabetes and the highest dose is 2.0 mg.
We filled up on the higher version of Wegoway at Costco for the same price and thought we were off to the races. But things were definitely not the same.
The issue wasn’t the high dose; This was the way of administration. While the Ozympic pen has four doses and uses a disposable needle, the Vigo has four different pens that each contain one dose, and each with an internal needle that attaches when you hang the pen on your body (similar to the EpiPen delivery system).
This, for the little one, was a very unpleasant change. We have to use a lot of force to pull out the needle. It hurt more. She hurt more. Sturm and Dring are back. She lost all the holiday weight, and a few more pounds, but began to hate the weekly ritual so much that we considered going back to Ozympic.
Big change
In January, there was another earthquake in the land of weight management: the FDA approved the Vigovi pill and it arrived in pharmacies across the country.
No more injections?! Little’s eyes lit up. Oral semaglutide should be taken daily, first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach, without water for more than four weeks. Then you don’t eat anything for at least 30 minutes.
Pills contain a lot of semaglutide – ours is 25 mg – because most of it is lost in the digestive system. But studies have found that its success is not as strong as the comparable injectable version. On the other hand, the pill doesn’t need to be refrigerated (so it’s good for travel), and it doesn’t require the parent to injure the patient (so it’s good for the parent’s long-term survival).
The child’s doctor prescribed him pills. We are only a few days away.
They say it can upset your bowels at first, even if you’ve been using semaglutide for a while; But so far, so good. She is very happy that her injectable days are (hopefully) over for good, and we are happy about it too. We also like that at Costco, we paid $299 for a 30-day supply of high-dose Vigovi pills, much less than we pay for the high-dose injectable version.
As these drugs are already very popular (I know a woman who dramatically increased her weight to get a prescription from an online provider), expect to see their use skyrocket now that there is no jab option. Within three weeks of the pill’s launch, about 170,000 people received prescriptions.
According to a KFF poll, about one in eight adults – 12% – had taken one of these drugs at the end of last year, before the pill hit the pharmacies. And about 60,000 young people aged 12-17 did the same (although this data is a little out of date and we’d bet it’s a lot more now).
Little is her doctor the first pediatric patient to take the pill route. Her blood labs have been ordered and we are all watching closely. Thanks for the concern we’ve heard from readers, and we’ll keep you posted.
Meanwhile, clothes. When the little one goes to the winter formal, she is greeted by an adorable chant of “Who’s that?! Is that really you?!” His memory makes me smile to this day.
However, I have not been able to get him to dress again. We’re back to the uniform of oversized t-shirts, sweat shorts and baseball caps. But her older sister’s college graduation is coming up and I can already hear the voice: “Is that you?!”
#year #goodbye #injections #wiggoy #doll