Hi tina, just a thought - you might find you can at least smoke less if you start feeling better overall …? I guess my thought process is that I can’t understand how anybody gives up smoking when they’re feeling wretched. My experience is that starting a biologic had a lot of good knock-on effects, including making me feel well enough to look after myself better in general.
Thanks Sybil! Hopefully I can quit smoking!!
How long should I wait on the Enbrel? Docs says 6 months to a year. I have been on it for almost 5 months and things are not yet great.
Most people who start it say they get results quickly. I was told it would be 2-12 weeks. I actually was able to go out without my walking stick the next day, for the first time in 4 years nearly. So, my suggestion would be that if it hasn’t worked in 5 months, try something else if you can.
Yep, I’d tend to echo Darinfan here. Biologics might not tend to get full effect for many months (or even years), but certainly both the anecdotal and research indicates that if you will get a good response, most of it will happen within weeks to the first few months.
In my experience it was within a week for Enbrel, and 4 weeks for Humira.
That’s not to say I didn’t keep improving for years on Humira (basically the breakthrough flares slowly got less severe), but I definitely got the first 80% of improvement on it within the first couple of months, and the next 10% within the next couple of months.