Mike is feeling fairly well today. He felt well enough to walk over the skybridge to his oncology appointment this afternoon, instead of using the wheelchair. He walked very slowly, but he did well. The bandages can be removed from his artery locations tonight. His cardiologist called this afternoon to see how Mike was doing and mentioned the next procedure to fix this blockage wouldn't be for 4 weeks. Mike got to thinking after the call, this would mean we'd need to stay in Houston longer than we thought. Tomorrow, Mike needs to see him briefly to pick up a prescription, so he is going to ask him if we could move it up close to the 5th of November so we could get home sooner.
Mike's abdominal pain is coming well under control as he continues to heal from the surgery. He is taking a lesser strength of pain medication and stretching out when he takes it also. The open wound is still "open", but I guess it is doing what it's suppose to be doing. We'll know better tomorrow morning when he sees his surgeon. Home Health care hasn't been too dependable, but I'm becoming more of a pro at caring for it, so it's working out alright. It's not my favorite thing to do, but I can do it.
Stress keeps challenging Mike and I but we're giving it a good fight. Today, we realized our hotel situation wasn't working out in our best interest, so we scrambled trying to find an alternative solution being we would have to get out of here Monday morning. After running into a lot of "no vacancy" problems (we're guessing because of the displaced citizens still from Hurricane Ike), we finally found a room back at the initial hotel we stayed at last Dec./Jan., but that wasn't an ideal location because it is farther away from MD Anderson. Because we don't have transportation, and Mike begins radiation treatments twice a day on Monday, Mike decided in a last ditch effort, to ask the hotel we're presently staying at, if they had any other rooms available, even if it meant we had to pay a little more. We figured they didn't, since they have been aware for almost 1 1/2 weeks now that we needed to extend our reservation. But they told us they did have another room available, which is at a higher rate. Still, it is the better solution, so we'll be moving into that tomorrow. Right now, we need peace of mind....not worrying about how we're going to get back and forth.
So we resolved one problem only to have another one pop up. Today Mike saw the oncologist. She will be giving Mike an oral form of chemotherapy (Xeloda) while he receives his radiation treatments. This particular doctor isn't the most positive of doctors Mike has, because she is requesting Mike to have another CT tomorrow, to see if the cancer has spread anywhere. She "doesn't want to waste our time", having radiation therapy if it has spread. But, that's okay...we'll do the extra CT for her. So, Mike and I wanted to see how much the oral chemotherapy was going to cost us, being pharmaceuticals are figured out differently with our insurance company than IV forms of chemotherapy. So we got online trying to check out the price and we saw we had no access to that information because "our insurance coverage ended October 4th". I'm sure you can imagine how we felt to read that. Of course, it was after business hours when we found this, so we'll have to wait until tomorrow to resolve this issue. Mike's sure Goody's will help us resolve this.
Tomorrow we have an appointment with the surgeon and a CT scan scheduled at 1 p.m. Please pray this will show the tumor hasn't changed (unless it has become smaller) and that it hasn't spread to anywhere else, so they can continue to treat Mike.
"And the peace of God, which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7
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