The TV is always on at our house, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. Sometimes it's merely on for background noise. What can often catch my attention, though, are commercials for new medicines. You know, the ones with people walking and laughing on a beach or buying fresh produce at an outdoor market-always with a smile on their face and looking as if life had never been better. What gets me is the list of side effects, which, of course, are rambled off so quickly you can hardly catch them all.

"The side effects are worse than the disease," my husband and I often joke. "Why would you take something that's going to make you feel worse?"

Well, I'm eating my words. No pun intended. One of the redeeming qualities of Byetta is its list of side effects. OK, I guess "redeeming" is subjective, but nonetheless folks who take Byetta have noted side effects that can actually be beneficial. Side effects like weight loss and loss of appetite. Two things that I'm very interested in, frankly.

So, as impatient as I am, I started looking for those side effects literally several minutes after I took my first dose of Byetta two days ago. When I ate my normal amount of dinner and still felt hungry, I shrugged it off and thought that I would simply miss out on the side effects.

Even with the first full day of taking the medicine under my belt, there was no nausea and no loss of appetite to be seen. In fact, I felt just as hungry as usual. But my numbers were insanely good, and decided that I should just put the possibility of side effects out of my mind and concentrate on the medicine's original intention: to control blood sugar. What a turnaround! Being bummed at not getting side effects from a drug!

And then, the morning of the second full day: Whamo! The nausea and loss of appetite hit and I was actually celebrating! I sent an email to my endo saying how much I love Byetta and that I had completely lost my desire to eat. I'm sure he thought I was nuts, but sent an encouraging reply.

It was the strangest thing, really. Normally by the time I get to work, which is anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour after I eat breakfast, I'm ready to eat again. It hit me rather suddenly that morning as I sat at my desk that not only was I not hungry, but that I actually couldn't fathom eating at that moment. I had no snack and went roughly an hour or so longer than usual before eating lunch. Not only that, but at dinner time I wasn't hungry either and contemplated not even eating! I can only hope that this continues.