First Checkup

First of all, I am sitting over at my neighbor's house typing this since our computer is in the shop.  Can you believe that now of all times it broke?  Seriously, Josh wanted to take some Tums last night but wasn't sure if it was OK, and of course we had no computer to look it up with.  Times like this when I wish we weren't so cheap and had smart phones or ipads or something! :)

We went for Josh's first checkup since starting chemo.  He has only taken 4 days of meds, so we weren't expecting miracles or anything.  And of course there weren't any. Ha!  But Josh's WBC went down from a high of 224 to 190.  So that's pretty good, but normal is 4-10, so we're still a ways off.  All the good stuff that we wanted to go up actually went down, but that is to be expected.  We figure the first 8 weeks or so will be more bad before good.

On our way home we got a call from the trial nurse who said that Josh's uric acid levels went up.  So they prescibed him some allopuronol  to help with that.  When white blood cells die they release uric acid which can put a strain on the kidneys and eyes.  Which completely explains Josh's horrible looking and painful eyes he has had over the last few days.  This is how he described the eye situation - take your fingers and squeeze your eyeball like it is going to pop and that is how it feels all the time.  Just lots of pressure and he thinks that is what has been keeping him from sleeping.  We are praying that starting this medicine will relieve some of that situation.

We are still dealing with the insurance company.  Evidently they have been calling MDACC asking for Dr. Cardama and are told they don't have a doc by that name.  He just moved from teaching to actually working with patients, so few people know him yet.  And his name is Quintas-Cardama, but just goes by Dr. Quintas.  I guess they were never going to call us to tell us about this problem!  Agghh, so frustrating!  So we gave them better info and hopefully they will verify all the paperwork tomorrow.  The first is coming rather quickly and I'm nervous there will be absolutely no paycheck!  Eeek!  Please pray the Metlife people get their act together.

Once again, thanks for all the wellwishes and messages, and don't be offended if I don't write back to you!  Especially now that our computer is down!  We will update later next week.  Everyone have a great Easter!