Tecfidera – Day 2

Today is my second day on Tecfidera. Since last post, I took one pill last night at around 8:30 pm and one pill this morning at 8:30 am, each preceded by an aspirin 30 minutes before. Last night was a bit of a race against the clock as I had a training run I coach at 6 pm, followed by meeting at 8 pm. I bought a pasta dish with tomato sauce and vegetables at a store that prepares such meals and brought it over to my meeting. Around 10 pm, I started feeling my stomach burning; a burning stomach is not something I think I ever got. I sometimes, but rarely, get heartburn, but further up in my digestive tract. My first guess is that having pasta with tomato sauce was definitely not helping the cause, but I was a bit stuck with an unplanned meal. I ate some more at 10 pm, some cheese, almonds, Greek yogurt and bread and took two Gaviscon tablets not to be bothered by my stomach during the night. The Gaviscon helped almost immediately.

Last night I had a little insomnia in the middle of the night. But insomnia is common for me. Had the same cereal and soy milk with blueberries, this morning. Except that instead of also having Greek yogurt as yesterday morning, I had a hardboiled egg. Took the Tecfidera at 8:30 am. It’s now noon and everything has been good so far, fingers crossed.

Note that I’m a bit less stressed today. Yesterday, every itch or feeling in my stomach made me think I had some side effect. Today, I’m a bit less worried which probably helps. Other than that, I called my Biogen nurse yesterday afternoon, to tell her, as asked, that I started the treatment. She said she'll take note in my file and let my neurologist know as well. She's going on vacation for a week but there's another nurse to cover for her in case I need help.