Changing my treatment to a facility closer to home has turned out to be more difficult than I expected. My nurse navigator claims she called to arrange my care with a new oncologist, but they never called her back. Because of her lack of urgency, I decided to call the potential oncologist's office to see if I could get things moving along. This was not to happen as easily as one might assume. The person who took my call stated that since I had already been established with a doctor within their practice, in my case I had been seeing Dr. A. before he sent me to Chapel Hill, the patient CANNOT switch to another doctor. Have any of you ever heard of such disturbing customer service? I really did not want to go back to Dr. A., so I took this battle back to Dr. R. in Chapel Hill in hopes that somehow she could handle the situation. Well, she handed it back to my nurse navigator. It was last Wednesday that I had treatment. Today is Tuesday. I will wait patiently till the end of this week before I start making some noise.
My treatment went well. I had a few large bubbles in the tubing carrying the fluid to my port that made me anxious. The nurse treating me was eventually able to get that under control.
If this drug works, I will be so incredibly excited. I feel great! The chemotherapy is delivered directly to the cancer by hitching a ride on the drug Herceptin. It is supposed to be pretty powerful. I feel far better than I did a year ago. Honestly, if I wasn't suffering from acid reflux right now--possibly unrelated to treatment, still could be though--I would not know I was being treated with chemotherapy. I do have some neuropathy in my finger tips, but I must be getting quite used to it because I wasn't thinking about it until just this moment.
My children are keeping me busy now that the three oldest are home from school. Two of them are transferring from one college to another for the 2014-2015 school year. This takes a lot of work. One thing I have learned about colleges is don't hesitate in letting your child apply to a big university. Just because a school is cheaper in price doesn't mean your financial obligation will be less than a more expensive school. For us, the bigger schools have offered university grants that far exceed anything offered by the smaller colleges.
My husband and I celebrated 21 years of marriage on the 28th. And, maybe you noticed my treatment occurred on this day. Not really a great way to be celebrating, but in a strange way it was the best way since the goal is to keep me around for future anniversaries. How fortunate I am to have someone who is willing to help me hold onto life. I feel very thankful.
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