Some Victories Today

Victory Number 1


Today is T's Last Chemotherapy!


Victory Number 2

T's scans show much improvement all around.....what was in her lungs is no longer visible, which was our big concern as the tumor on her breast will be removed surgically as will the lymph nodes under her arm.

Next step.....1 more scan next week and then a surgical consult the week after......surgery, then radiation.

She has to continue weekly IV's of one of her non-chemo drugs for the next year through all of this, although they may eventually be spaced further apart after the next month or 2.

Some of the side effect's will take 6 months to a year to get better, but we're headed in the right direction.

Victory Number 3

The Health Care Advocate for the State of CT, or rather his top employee, "M" and I, and our wonderful Oncologist, Dr. H, her billing manager G, called United Heath Care OUT on their lies. They claimed we and the doctors never sent them the forms they needed to process this claim and tried to say it was pre-existing. She also tried to say nothing was denied, but "in-review"

WELL.....

I had gotten copies of the flat out denial letters they sent Tina's doctors from G, scanned them in and sent them to her and cc:ed the Advocate AND the employer's liaison to UHC. Caught!

Dr. H called them herself twice and documented  who she spoke to and when and that she had made it perfectly clear this was not pre-existing.

G, had copies of all the forms she had sent to them (as did I) and copied and sent them again along with a new form faxed to her AND a copy to the Health Care Advocate as did all of T's doctors, making it clear that the UHC lady was a liar again.

Let me mention again how awesome the Health Care Advocate, M, was and is....she set it up so that ALL correspondence regarding T must be sent by email for documentation purposed and cc:ed to her, me, the HR liaison for T's employer to the insurance company......so when she lies or does something half @ssed, the Advocate and I could call her out for all to see.

Bottom Line, T may continue her care with HER doctors going forward and her claims will be processed.

Mind you, I'll believe they will pay those bills only when I see a check has been issued to her doctors and not before, because that UHC lady is sneaky. Thankfully the Advocate has her number and our back.

Sooooo relieved, I can't begin to tell you how many nights sleep I have lost over all this in the past month.

Special Note

Tina's doctors and their staff have been wonderful to us....they care for T and fight for her....and they even share in our joys at the small victories along the way.

Today is a GOOD DAY!

"I wanna newwwww drug..."

"....one that won't make me sick."

Sitting in chemo room with T as I write this. She's been REALLY sick as of late coupled with morning her mom and now fully understanding all her mom endured during her treatment has been a bit too much to take.

Done with the 1st set of chemo meds and now starting Taxol and Herceptin for the next 8 weeks and treatments are EVERY week now.

Scared sh!tless about how she will react to the Taxol. Tina has a little neuropathy in her hands already without the Taxol and the Taxol is known to cause or worsen that side-effect....can't catch a break.

They SAY the nausea should not be as bad on this new drug, but the new drug has it's own set of scary side-effects...neuropathy in hands and feet being the worst on the list.

Oh and did I mention these meds make menopause worse......wicked hot flashes! Poor T goes from blazing hot to freezing cold and back again in minutes at times.

As for me, I'm loosing my mind at times.....hard to watch and not be able to do anything but be there....and by hard I mean sometimes I want to scream and hit things. She sometimes out of pain, sickness, grief, frustration and 100 other things will just curl up in a ball and weep uncontrollably. Rips my heart out.

I keep saying to her and myself that in 6 to 8 month or so, this will be over.....but it's little comfort.

That is all for now.....that's enough

Overwhelmed

Sometimes I get so overwhelmed I just can't deal with the simplest of tasks.

Holding my girl

The heater in our apartment doesn't work again and we need to tell our landlord ASAP. Normally something like this would not stress me out too much, but with T going through cancer treatment and her immunity being compromised as a result, has me worried that we will spend yet another winter with a heater that works occasionally at best. 

That jerk my landlord hired to buy and install this heater took advantage of her, she got swindled by her "repair man" who got this non returnable heater for her...we call him Mr. Magoo. He's actually a cross between Mr. Magoo and Archie Bunker and never EVER admits he's clueless.

I hope she doesn't use him again and just chooses to buy a good heater herself from sears or where ever? They deliver, they install, and they guarantee their stuff and if something is wrong they will either fix or replace it....Mr. Magoo who is quite frankly a jack ass better not try and take advantage of her again. She and we deserve better.

T has developed a new side effect. The palms of her hands feel as if she burned them on a hot frying pan. They are tender, red, and tingle. This raises new problems. The new chemotherapy she's supposed to start in a week causes the problem she's already having with her hands, which means it could make it worse.....so off to a neurologist we go to find out exactly what is causing this side effect just to make sure.

The neurologist will determine the cause, the oncologist will then have to re-think the type of chemo she can give T....oh and that might mean chemo every single week with extra medicine to try and control the side effects. This means we also have to worry about how accommodating T's work will be with her needing treatment EVERY week.

If that's not enough, we are seeing the surgeon next Thursday late in the afternoon to decide if it's time for surgery yet. If it is, we have to pray her work will accommodate us being as they are not allowing her to even apply for FMLA until November (because she qualified months ago but missed the 5 day window to sign up that they never told her about).....so will she have a job and keep her insurance or not? 

I don't want to put off her surgery until she can sign up for FMLA, if they don’t accommodate us, I'm gonna be pissed....sooooo worried about that.

All this is preventing me from enjoying the bit of happy news we got which is that the chemo is working. The tumors are smaller.....even the nodes in her lungs which we don't know if they are cancer or not have shrunk, SOME of the lymph nodes even disappeared......what the doctors are doing is working, and I don't want T's f#cking job to interfere with that, even though the doctors will work with us either way....

I want to be happy, cry out of frustration, and scream all at once to express a dozen conflicting emotions at once.

This all hit me at once and......I just shut down for a few hours to get my sh!t together before I could do anything.....sounds stupid......silly even.....but I just couldn't deal. My world is out of control and that's really hard for someone like me who tries to think of every possible scenario so I can have a plan for each and every one.

I just want to do some fun things with my girl as much as possible to help us both get through this. She's a tough cookie, my girl......stronger then she thinks she is and while I fear EVERYTHING, I long for the day we can look back on all this as a distant memory.

Adriamycin and Cytoxan

Friday was round 3 of this little cocktail of chemotherapy drugs for T.......1 more to go in 2 weeks and then.....

....and then we change the drugs and see the surgeon to discuss what comes next.

1. surgery, reconstruction, more chemo, then radiation
2. surgery, more chemo, radiation, then reconstruction
3. more chemo, surgery, reconstruction, more chemo, then radiation

I'm thinking option 3, but we shall see, depends on what the surgeon thinks.

T is having a hard time....cabin fever. We had company one night last week which was really nice. T's friend S came over and we had home made pizza. It was good too!....and it was nice to have company.

Can't wait 'til tomorrow.....her brother is coming over with the girls.....this is the 1st time they will see Auntie Tina with no hair. She gets a kick out of the way kids react to her being bald. She gives them a big smile when she catches them starring. It's cute how amazed they look and the big smiles T gets in return.

As for me, I teeter between OK and pissed off at the world and everyone in it......about every 2.5 seconds. Trying to keep that under control is not easy.

Who Loves You Baby?

I do...

Can you say nausea, boys and girls?

Poor T had a horrible day of really bad nausea. She's been so sick, eating and drinking has been really hard for her.

When we got to the doctor, they took one look at her and hooked her up to an IV to give her fluids and anti-nausea meds, that didn't work. The fluids helped a tiny little bit.....I expect we will go back again tomorrow to do that again, and the doc definately wants to see and hydrate her again Friday.

I've never seen T this miserable and sick.....it makes me feel helpless and yet grateful that I can be here to take care of her all at the same time. I don't know what she would have done if I wasn't here....not that I actually did much...
...tried to get her to eat and drink
...drove her to the doctor
...ran a few errands

 I wish these 1st four chemotherapy treatments would fly by.....1 down, 3 to go.....after that, they drop the heavy meds making her so sick and switch to meds she will tolerate way better....or so they say.

If that's all not enough, we have to worry that her work will screw her over and she'll loose her job because she's sick, in spite of the fact that we have doctors notes. They are making this way harder on T then they have to......people are selfish and evil sometimes....got the name of a good employment lawyer from a friend, just in case....hope we don't need him though.

A Long Day

Tried to get Tina out of the house for a couple of hours today....it exhausted her in every way.....physically, mentally, emotionally.....like much of this weekend, I'm sitting next to her while she sleeps quietly.

It has been 3 days of nausea that has tried her patience, her strength and her determination.....she is stronger then she thinks, although there is no way she can go to work tomorrow and be, not only on her feet all day, but lifting 50 lb. bags of food, and chopping and cooking all day.

I've watched her break down, I've watched her give up, I've watched her fight, I've watched her get angry, I've watched her laugh.....and now as I watch her sleep, I know that I love her more then I thought it was possible to love another human being.

Through all this...and we've only just begun this journey......I have been on an emotional roller coaster myself.....not quite the same as hers, but just as scary and with as many twists, dips and turns.....I have to deal with her crazy mood swings, but she has to deal with mine too...

frustration....I find myself snapping at people for no reason, yelling at drivers who cut me off like some kind of lunatic one minute, and laughing at myself for it later.....hoping my friends understand when I'm angry, or quiet or forgetful.....hope they and T know it's the frustration talking and that I don't mean half the sh!t I say sometimes....so take nothing personally, please.

Nothing frustrates me more then a problem I can't fix. She has to struggle through a treatment that will last for almost a full year and there is nothing I can do but watch, and try to help her through it as best I can.....it sucks when your an "I wanna fix it now" kind of person......and did I mention, patience is not a virtue I have a lot of.

.....tomorrow is another day.....