Pharmacy that will post to Australia (with prescription)

[kushami]

I can get a prescription for nimodipine from my specialist, but the problem is that the tablets are not covered by our government subsidy here in Australia, and would be $AU800. *

It is legal for me to order them from another country, accompanied by the prescription, so I thought I would try a Canadian pharmacy. But the response was that the medication ships from the US, despite being ordered in Canada, and the US supplier will not ship to Australia. They were nice about it, but the answer was definitely ”no”.

Any ideas?

Should I try other Canadian pharmacies, or is it going to be the same at all of them?

* If you needed nimodipine tablets for a stroke or aneurysm, you would be given a supply while you were in hospital, from the hospital pharmacy, and that would be free. Ditto if you were a hospital outpatient, which I am not.

 

[kushami]

P.S. I know you can try ordering from prescription-free pharmacies, but if the parcel is noticed at customs it will be destroyed and I will get a warning letter, so I prefer not to do that.

Also if I get them via a prescription-free pharmacy, I won’t be able to tell anyone medical in Australia that I’m taking them, which could be dangerous. (I have to have major surgery sometime soon.)

 

[heapsreal]

P.S. I know you can try ordering from prescription-free pharmacies, but if the parcel is noticed at customs it will be destroyed and I will get a warning letter, so I prefer not to do that.

Also if I get them via a prescription-free pharmacy, I won’t be able to tell anyone medical in Australia that I’m taking them, which could be dangerous. (I have to have major surgery sometime soon.)

If you send the pharmacy a copy of your prescription so they can pack it with the medication, you shouldn't have any issues. Majority of parcels aren't opened by customs anyway, unless it's really suspect. Unless it's changed, its legal to import medication of up to a 3 month supply at once.

Pharmacies I've used that don't require a script but will certainly post your parcel with a copy of your script are
Alldaychemist.com
SafeGenericPharmacy.com
I've used these company's many times and had no issues with medication quality, payment or shipping issues. Alldaychemist you can BPay, SafeGenericPharmacy I think is just a credit card plus other ways to pay them.
Not sure if they have the medication you are looking for but I hope this post helps

 

[heapsreal]

I can get a prescription for nimodipine from my specialist, but the problem is that the tablets are not covered by our government subsidy here in Australia, and would be $AU800. *

30mg x 90 for 66usd, struth! That's from Alldaychemist. I can't believe it's $800 here, wow. I don't know how the Australian government justify that

 

[heapsreal]

I can get a prescription for nimodipine from my specialist, but the problem is that the tablets are not covered by our government subsidy here in Australia, and would be $AU800. *

It is legal for me to order them from another country, accompanied by the prescription, so I thought I would try a Canadian pharmacy. But the response was that the medication ships from the US, despite being ordered in Canada, and the US supplier will not ship to Australia. They were nice about it, but the answer was definitely ”no”.

Any ideas?

Should I try other Canadian pharmacies, or is it going to be the same at all of them?

* If you needed nimodipine tablets for a stroke or aneurysm, you would be given a supply while you were in hospital, from the hospital pharmacy, and that would be free. Ditto if you were a hospital outpatient, which I am not.

Just a thought, Amlodipine is a cheap generic medicine in Australia used for hypertension and is in the same class of medications as nimodipine. Amlodipine has been study with success in treating vasospasms post subarachnoid haemorrhage and similar.

Might be worth talking to your dr and see if this is a viable alternative for you

 

[kushami]

@heapsreal , sorry, I wasn’t very clear.

I don’t want to try to get the medication without a prescription, as that is illegal here (for this particular medication).

I also don’t want to send my prescription to a prescription-free pharmacy because it contains sensitive information that could be used for identity theft.

I’m not saying that prescription-free pharmacies are untrustworthy, but if something were to go wrong, I’d have to tell the authorities that I handed over my details to a prescription-free pharmacy, and they would say “Too bad then”.

If something did go wrong with a proper pharmacy, it could at least be investigated by authorities in both countries.

I realise this is unlikely, but I want to stick to the rules for my own peace of mind.

 

[kushami]

30mg x 90 for 66usd, struth! That's from Alldaychemist. I can't believe it's $800 here, wow. I don't know how the Australian government justify that

Well, the people who need it get it for free in hospital. I don’t even really know why it’s available as a prescription outside hospital pharmacies, and I can’t imagine it’s even been sold even once for $800, unless it was covered by private health insurance.

People who need it off label, e.g. for migraine, would have support from their specialist who would make a compassionate access application to the pharmaceutical company.

But my specialist is hopeless. He has been procrastinating on this for months. He says he will do it at one appointment, but by the next one he has come up with an excuse not to have done it.

I’m changing to a new specialist in a few weeks, but it will take a while to get him up to speed, and I don’t know what he will want to prescribe.

Also I don’t know how long compassionate access applications take.

If I could get it from Canada at least I would know whether it works or not, and then pursue the compassionate access if needed.

 

[kushami]

I have contacted a couple more Canadian pharmacies, and, just for fun, a Scottish one. (My family come from Scotland.)

Will report back.

 

[kushami]

@heapsreal , good thought as I am already on amlodipine!

I thought it was a miracle cure when I first started it, but one week in I got total insomnia, and after not sleeping (or even yawning!) for three nights, I had to halve the dose.

It still helps but not enough for me to function safely in the world :-(

I am hoping that nimodipine (being selective for cerebral blood vessels) will work for me.

If not, I have a list of other vasodilators and am about to start seeing a cardiologist who specialises in hypertension medication. So there are more things to try.

(I have been trying various standard blood pressure medication combos under my current specialist, but I’ve had to do all the research myself and he has not contributed any useful knowledge to guide me.)

 

[heapsreal]

@heapsreal , good thought as I am already on amlodipine!

I thought it was a miracle cure when I first started it, but one week in I got total insomnia, and after not sleeping (or even yawning!) for three nights, I had to halve the dose.

It still helps but not enough for me to function safely in the world :-(

I am hoping that nimodipine (being selective for cerebral blood vessels) will work for me.

If not, I have a list of other vasodilators and am about to start seeing a cardiologist who specialises in hypertension medication. So there are more things to try.

(I have been trying various standard blood pressure medication combos under my current specialist, but I’ve had to do all the research myself and he has not contributed any useful knowledge to guide me.)

Good luck.
I've found having cfs and then seeing a specialist, they can't put the 2 together if you have another issue.

I saw a neurologist for chronic headaches, which he officially wrote migraine but said he isn't sure as it could be from previous shingles episodes on my head. I had a few weird things on my mri, but it seems like they diagnose migraine when they don't have a definite diagnosis??

I'm currently on Candesartan for BP which I've just increased the dose. It's suppose to reduce frequency of migraines etc as well as keep BP down. It works for blood pressure but I haven't noticed anything for headaches. When I read up about it, it sounds like a miracle but ....

With cfs I think it just puts everything out of whack, so many have weird BP issues. Maybe it's apart of the whole orthostic issue.

I hope you find the medication cheap somewhere and the specialist can sort things out for you

 

[kushami]

I heard back from two more Canadian pharmacies – they are happy to fulfil Australian prescriptions, but nimodipine is dispatched from the US, and the supplier in the US won’t post to Australia.

Have written back asking whether they couldn’t get one packet sent to Canada and then on to me, and have offered to pay the extra postage from the US to Canada….

Fingers crossed!

 

[kushami]

@heapsreal , I am getting myself so confused!

Does alldaychemist.com ask for prescriptions? It looks like it does. So then I could order from there.

I got confused because it was on the thread here under “prescription free”.

Urgh. I hope my new specialist is better (wouldn’t be hard). It will reduce my stress.

 

[heapsreal]

@heapsreal , I am getting myself so confused!

Does alldaychemist.com ask for prescriptions? It looks like it does. So then I could order from there.

I got confused because it was on the thread here under “prescription free”.

Urgh. I hope my new specialist is better (wouldn’t be hard). It will reduce my stress.

Yes it does ask for a script but also people can skip through that part and order without a script also.

 

[kushami]

I have a lead: Dickson Chemist in Scotland can fulfil my precription! But I have to find out how much it will be.

Luckily the dosage is the same as in Australia, so if the packet size is the same and the price is right, and it equates to three months’ requirements (to meet personal import rules here), I can go ahead.

Will report back.

Update: It will be about $AU220 inc. postage. The tablets are the same as those here in Australia in dosage and how many in a packet (probably exactly the same product).

So I am going to go ahead and order it. If it is better than my current treatment, that will make my compassionate access application stronger. If not, at least I tried it and I can move on with my new specialist, who knows a lot about vasodilating medications.

I have a long list of other possibilities to discuss with him, and I hope he will be able to suggest things I don’t know about.

 

[kushami]

Well, my specialist, who said he would prescribe nimodipine, now says he won’t for a bunch of reasons that he didn’t mention at the time and are based on false assumptions.

For instance, he said he wouldn’t prescribe it because it was too expensive for me, even though I specifically said I could afford it, and he has never asked about my financial situation.

It would be cheaper than one of his useless appointments!

So I have ordered it from alldaychemist.com and hope it makes it through customs.

 

[heapsreal]

Well, my specialist, who said he would prescribe nimodipine, now says he won’t for a bunch of reasons that he didn’t mention at the time and are based on false assumptions.

For instance, he said he wouldn’t prescribe it because it was too expensive for me, even though I specifically said I could afford it, and he has never asked about my financial situation.

It would be cheaper than one of his useless appointments!

So I have ordered it from alldaychemist.com and hope it makes it through customs.

Good luck

 

[kangaSue]

Something out of left field as a non drug thing that I just came across making mention that it can help lower blood pressure is Dorsal Root Ganglion Stimulation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7591825/

 

[kushami]

According to the tracking info, my precious packet of nimodipine has travelled from Frankfurt to Sydney, and is now en route to Melbourne.

So it looks like it went unnoticed at customs!

 

[kushami]

Well, my package from Allday Chemist arrived. Am simultaneously pleased it got here, and annoyed with Customs for not doing their job properly.

I am taking the nimodipine to see whether it is superior to the other types of vasodilating drugs that I have tried so far, such as ordinary calcium-channel blockers (CCBs), angiotensin-converting enzymes (ACEs) and angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) – your basic blood pressure medications, excluding diuretics.

Nimodipine is thought to be selective for cerebral blood vessels, and can cross the blood–brain barrier. So that is why it might be more targeted or more effective for treating cerebral vasoconstriction.

(Please note that I do not have ME/CFS, but a condition called OCHOS that, in my case, is caused by abnormal constriction of blood flow to the brain. Some people with ME/CFS seem to have something similar according to recent studies by Visser, van Campen, et al, so that is why I hang out here. Not many people have been diagnosed with stand-alone OCHOS from vasoconstriction yet so I have more in common with folks here than in dysautonomia groups in terms of investigating vasodilators.)