The Ozempic dilemma — worth the pain, and the money?

I recently heard a doctor speak very enthusiastically about Ozempic use by heart patients such as myself. Ozempic and similar drugs now on the market cut your appetite (to put it very simply) and you drop pounds. That in turn helps heart health.

Being able to take a pill (or an injection in Ozempic’s case) while still eating whatever you want sounds like the American dream doesn’t it? There are side-effects. A friend taking it for her diabetes tells me she throws up from it but finds it a small price to pay for dropping pounds.

And what about the price — more than $1,000 a month? Medicare won’t pay for it, although lobbying is underway to change that. Private insurance may or may not, enjoy the fight (that will probably make you nauseous too).

So should I ask my doctor to prescribe it (wonder if he would)? This all comes at a time when I’m feeling particularly frustrated by my weight.

After my first stent in 2012, I lost 30 pounds in about a year because I stopped eating everything I liked. But I could only stay hungry for so long and, after needing a second stent in 2017, I began wondering how much losing weight really impacted my arteries which seem determined to clog every few years.

Fast-forward to 2020 and Covid. Worrying about what I was eating went out the window at a time when a new virus could kill me in a matter of days.

I ate whatever we could buy in depleted stores or from restaurant takeout windows. And I started getting deliveries from a local bakery which had never delivered before.

The result — I’m now 14 pounds heavier than when Covid hit four years ago and 31 pounds heavier than my lightest in 2013. And I feel it every day. Exercise? I walk and ride an exercise bike. And for the past year and a half I’ve been taking a weekly boxing class. Punching the big bag is a great way to face my weight-loss frustration. But it hasn’t helped me lose any weight.

So is an Ozempic injection the answer? The idea of having medicine take away my appetite seems a bit big brotherish to me, a little too controlling. But am I just looking for an excuse? What would you do?