An Our Town Reno reader, Elizabeth, who asked for her last name to be kept anonymous, has battled with mental health her entire life. But now new possibilities with telehealth and quickly sending off medical information from at home equipment are making her feel her “quality of life is holding strong.”
A rough home life as a kid, she says, forced her to leave her family at age 16. She quickly found work, got married and started a family. But her mental health continued to be mis-diagnosed and affect her day to day life.
“Meanwhile, I am going from one job to the next,” Elizabeth said. She knew she had an issue but doctors struggled with diagnosing her.
It wasn’t until she was in her 30s, she says, when her disease was properly diagnosed as bipolar disorder. Now she has been working with Dr. Philip Malinas to find a balance in medication that helps even the keel between her manic states and depression.
“All the medicine a bipolar person takes creates some side effects, [including] some deadly side effects,” explained Elizabeth. She said this oftentimes can become life threatening without much notice, which is why having vitals checked constantly is so essential.
Elizabeth has not visited her doctor in person since the pandemic moved everything online. Telehealth has been her way of checking in with Dr. Malinas. The Athelas at-home equipment she recently received is covered by Medicaid and Elizabeth believes this could be a boon not just for her but for others in the community. The equipment is shipped to the patient's house and includes a blood pressure cuff, glucose monitor, and scale. The equipment sends real time data to a physician who can better monitor a patient with this constant information.
According to the Athelas program’s website (screengrab above), the metabolic conditions of people living with mental illness is severely undertreated. Elizabeth believes this to be true from her experience with mental illness.
”I am hopeful that [Dr. Malinas] can recognize signs that might better inform medications,” Elizabeth said. And these medications are not cheap. Tier four medicine, or brand name, can cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars each month, even with Medicaid. Elizabeth was taking Saphris, a dissolvable bipolar medication for a while but “had to live off samples “because it costs over $3,000 a month,” she said.