Thirty Clicks

After the 5mg experience, I didn’t go back to a dedicated 2.5mg pen straight away.

I kept using the 5mg pen. I just used less of it, every week.

Each pen is good for four weeks. The pen dials in clicks, and a full week’s dose is 60 clicks — so a 5mg pen is 60 clicks a week of 5mg, four weeks running. Half of that, 30 clicks a week, should, in theory, put you at 2.5mg a week instead.

And it should make the same pen last twice as long. Eight weeks instead of four.

So that’s what I did.

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This raised a few interesting questions, and I had a few interesting discussions about it.

A 2.5mg pen costs £123.97. A 5mg pen costs £163.97. A box of 100 Injetipen needles is £20.

Used exactly as intended — one pen, four weeks, full clicks every time — that works out per week as:

• 2.5mg pen: £123.97 ÷ 4 = £30.99 a week
• 5mg pen: £163.97 ÷ 4 = £40.99 a week

Now do the sum on the 5mg pen at half-clicks. Thirty clicks a week instead of sixty means the same pen lasts eight weeks, not four.

£163.97 ÷ 8 = £20.50 a week, for the same 2.5mg dose the dedicated pen sells for £30.99 a week.

That’s roughly 34% cheaper, and the pen lasts twice as long into the bargain.

The manufacturer’s position is that counting clicks isn’t a valid or accurate way to dose. Which is a fair thing for them to say. It’s also a fairly convenient thing for them to say, given they sell the smaller pen separately and would rather you bought that one instead.

I don’t think that claim stacks up on its own logic, either. If half the clicks on a 5mg pen genuinely can’t be trusted to deliver 2.5mg, that’s not really a statement about clicks. That’s a statement about the accuracy of the pen itself, at every dose, including the one printed on the box.

Maybe they’re right. I don’t know that for certain. But I know why they’d say it either way.

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That thought led somewhere else, and I want to be honest about it rather than pretend it didn’t cross my mind.

My wife is on the 5mg pen, at £40.99 a week. I’m on 2.5mg, at £30.99 a week. Bought separately, that’s two pens, two sets of costs, for a combined £71.99 a week between us.

A 7.5mg pen costs £223.97, which is £55.99 a week over its four weeks.

If that pen also dials in 60 clicks a week, then 40 clicks gets you to 5mg and 20 clicks gets you to 2.5mg. Dialled together, that’s still only 60 clicks a week — the pen’s normal weekly allowance — just split between two people instead of used by one.

So the pen still lasts its usual four weeks. It just does both our doses at once.

£55.99 a week for both of us, instead of £71.98 a week separately. That’s £15.99 a week less, or £63.97 over a single four-week pen.

I’m not condoning that. I want to be clear about that.

But I’d be lying if I said the maths didn’t make sense, because it obviously does.

The one thing that isn’t up for negotiation, whatever anyone decides to do with the clicks, is sharing needles. Own needle, every time. That part isn’t flexible.