I’ve just had my local pharmacist shame me for being a drain on NHS resources. I take various different meds, some for my cancer treatment but most for dealing with side-effects caused by the cancer treatment. Some to prevent me from having another stroke. One of the issues I’ve been dealing with is severe migraines, with blindness, vomiting and excruciating pain lasting up to three days at a time. I’ve had various different treatments for this, including nerve blocking injections in my head, but the only medication that really helped was rizatriptan.

However, rizatriptan isn’t suitable for people who’ve had strokes, so they won’t prescribe it any more. So it was back to the neurologist, trying various different treatments and meds until I was, a few months ago, prescribed rimegepant. This is nowhere near as good as rizatriptan, but it does help. So for the past couple of months I’ve been having this and I just went to get my most recent prescription filled.

The neurologist said I can take one every day as a preventative but the GP’s surgery have been refusing to prescribe me more than 8 a month. They wouldn’t say why, but today when I went to collect my prescription, the pharmacist had a go at me about the cost of the medication. I was literally just standing there waiting for it, and totally unprovoked he came out, handed me the bag and just started loudly complaining in front of all the other people about how this medication is too expensive, and his general tone and demeanour clearly said that I’m being a selfish drain on NHS resources, although he didn’t dare actually say that in words.

I got home and googled the cost, it’s £12 per tablet. Logically I know it’s not my fault I need meds, but I just feel really ashamed and guilty now for being prescribed this. Maybe this explains why the GP surgery won’t prescribe me one as a preventative each day. I’m wondering whether I should even bother to keep getting this prescription filled if the people at the pharmacy think so badly of me for taking it.

This isn’t even the first time the NHS has complained about the cost of my meds. Some years ago, before my stroke when I was still taking rizatriptan, they tried to change me to a cheaper med, one I’d already tried that didn’t work, saying rizatriptan was too expensive. (It’s like £2 a tablet). I begged the woman not to change it and when she said she was changing it, I broke down in tears at the thought of going back to 3 day long torturous migraines. She actually laughed and told me to stop being dramatic, but in the end after getting advice on how to deal with her from people online, she agreed not to change it.

It’s the same with receiving disability benefits, having to go through endless assessments and appeals, being given zero points and having my payments stopped, being left hungry and destitute. Again and again, this society shows me that i am nothing but an unwanted drain on resources, selfishly sponging off working people. Yet, they won’t let me have a peaceful and painless exit. If assisted suicide was legal and free on the NHS, I would take it. They would save money then. But no, I can’t access that service. They even make DIY suicide difficult by making the easier methods illegal and difficult to obtain. Just - what do they want? They don’t want me dead but they don’t want me alive either. I have two risk factors for stroke - my cancer treatment and my migraines, and I’ve already had one stroke at a young age. They tell me I’m at risk of another. Keeping my migraines to a minimum makes the chance of another stroke less likely and if I do have another it could be more severe and more life changing if I keep having uncontrollable migraines. Then they’ll have to spend even more money on me.

Sorry just a rant because I’m feeling like worthless trash after my trip to the pharmacist. Just legalise assisted suicide and kill me already. But this society are cowards. They don’t want to say “Yes, let’s kill you as you’re disabled,” because they don’t want to sound like nazis. So instead they slowly kill us by denying our benefit claims, leaving us homeless and hungry, changing our meds to cheaper ones that don’t work and whatever else they can think of to get rid of us without making it look like societal murder.