This article is part of our coverage of the Benefits Canada 2011 Face-to-Face: Drug Plan Management Forum, held at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto on Dec. 1, 2011. Read more coverage of the event here.
One morning, at age 21, Jeff Aarssen found himself unable to get out of bed.
A serious athlete at the time, Aarssen responded by scaling back his running from 60 kilometres to 40 kilometres per week. Within a few months, he could barely walk. A family doctor diagnosed Aarssen with rheumatoid arthritis and told him he’d be in a wheelchair by age 30. “I resolved to prove him wrong,” Aarssen said.
Aarssen hopped on the merry-go-round of treatments, starting with anti-inflammatory drugs and progressing to disease-modifying drugs such as methotrexate, which requires abstention from alcohol. “I became everybody’s designated driver,” he joked. Finally, Aarssen had the opportunity to try Enbrel, a biologic drug that targets the autoimmune dysfunction underlying rheumatoid arthritis. “I’ve been taking it for 10 years, and it’s been a miracle drug for me,” he said. “I travel 100 times per year, play 55 rounds of golf and lead a nearly normal life—all because I have access to the right treatment.”
Now a vice-president at Great-West Life, Aarssen credits his employer for making all of this possible. “They’ve made modifications to my workplace, allowing flextime and virtual work, and they pay the full cost of my drug treatment,” he said. “This has enabled me to be productive and give value back to them, which I’d like to think is a good ROI.”
Gabrielle Bauer is a freelance writer in Toronto. gbauer@sympatico.ca
Get a PDF of this article.