Gearing Up for Twice the Chemo

Once we were sprung from MDA early in the week we ran off to Austin to be weird. We hung out with friends, spent quality time with Poppy, and enjoyed spending Jason's birthday overlooking Lake Travis. By the end of the week we were on our way back to Lubbock and Austin was in our rear view mirror.

While in Austin Jason and I met with Representative Frullo's staff. They were very responsive to our reasoning for why proton therapy is a necessary treatment for employees of the state of Texas. We gave a variety of standard arguments but they seemed to appreciate the economics arguments the most because those are arguments that can be used to convince policy makers to set policy requiring ERS and the insurance providers to cover certain types of treatments or at least provide boundaries for how to determine whether treatments are necessary. In general, we argued that although the insurance company would save approximately $30,000 in the short run by covering photon radiation but not proton therapy for brain cancer and other cancers near critical organs, the state of Texas literally would be destroying a major asset (who would guess that my brain is this large of an asset?). We figure that the state has invested approximately $2,000,000 in (including salary, fringe benefits, recruiting, travel, continuing education, and laboratory equipment). Actually, probably more if you include space allocation, but I don't have the formula the state uses for that. Destroying the one asset that I need for maximal effectiveness in my job costs the state funds already allocated toward this asset, partial or permanent disability in the long run, and medical insurance or medicaid for life. So, basically, I think we persuaded them and they said they are going to continue to look into this issue because the last thing they want is to provide benefits that end up costing the state money. I'm good at marketing. Who knew?!

As soon as we drove into Lubbock I had to go straight to UMC for a blood draw, which was faxed to MDA (this provides a baseline for specific indicators before I start my next round of chemo on Tuesday). I was a little uneasy about a blood draw someplace besides MDA (I'm now officially spoiled) and having had so many sticks in the last several months means that I basically look like a heroin addict. It actually went fine and they got the numbers faxed off to MDA in time for the long weekend. Now I will start my 5 days of chemo on Tuesday. This round is twice the dose that I had during proton therapy and they will increase the dose each month so they will keep close eyes on the blood work. All this attention is surely not going to go to my head!