The new triple drug for CF has been approved!  You can read the FDA article here.  It is supposed to help about 90% of the CF population.  It is for my CF mutations (double delta f508).  The name of it is Trikafta (elexacaftor/ivacaftor/tezacaftor).  I can’t help but to think trifecta when I see the name…haha.

Now, I know your question is if I am going to take it or not.  I am still on the fence about it.  It has the same components as Symdeko (the most recent drug for CF) in it.  I had hard time on the Symdeko with my depression.  I’m not willing to be super depressed all the time in hopes that the new drug would possibly help me, if that makes sense. I was on Symdeko for about 4 months when I noticed that I was more depressed and I thought it was that my antidepressant wasn’t working anymore and that I had to find a new one.  I went through a very dark time switching antidepressants and none of them working like the original one I was on.  Then it clicked that the only new thing was the Symdeko and I should try to come off it and see if things got better.  Slowly but surely after coming off of the Symdeko and going back on the Effexor (the antidepressant I was on originally) things got better.  I’m not the only person to have this type of adverse reaction to Symdeko.

So, with that said I don’t want to have the same problem with the new drug.  I already have bad depression days so I don’t want to add to them.  I don’t have far to go on Effexor to be on the max dose, so that doesn’t help either.  I haven’t discussed it with my team yet.  I’m sure they will bring it up at my next appointment if not before now that it is approved.  It will still take some time for it to get produced and filtered out to the pharmacies that will provide it.  Plus getting it approved will be a challenge to some.  It is very expensive.  I think Symdeko is something like $300,000 a year.  So you can imagine what the brand new medicine will be considering Symdeko is a few years old now.  That’s all for now.

Until next time…