Weekly Update - January 31, 2007

Still trying to figure out the blog thing here - I'm not sure if you are getting the update mail that says I've posted a new entry. This will be the second post in the series - I haven't added anything since the first one yet, so don't fret.

So - on to the news. I received round number 15 last Thursday. I was prepared to make my case with the oncologist to begin adding a new drug with this round - Erbitux. If you will recall, my tumor marker numbers have not been improving and we discussed going two more rounds with the present regimem, getting a new scan and evaluating. After the last set of marker results though, I wanted to just go ahead with the Erbitux now instead of waiting another month or so. (As an aside, my marker number did come down again this week - back to where it was a month ago - I'm baffled.) I was quite pleased though when I started to bring up the subject, he interrupted and said "I think we should start the Erbitux today, but.....". This is an extremely expensive drug - Imclone Systems is very proud of their wonder drug (made famous by Martha Stewart's little insider trading problem), and have made it the most expensive drug on the US market today. As such, in order for my insurance company to let me have it, they need to see my original biopsy results to make sure that I have a favorable chance of responding to it. So, another release form to sign so that he can have the results sent to the insurance company before we can go ahead with the Erbitux. There is some chance that the insurance company will say no on this, but my oncologist assured me not to worry about it - he will persuade them. Paying for it out-of-pocket is not really an option - I would have to either set up a methodical plan to rob every convenience store in the county on a weekly basis (not a particularly good long-term business plan), or plan on a second career in white collar crime ("I am a succesful businessman from Nigeria that needs to invest my money in a US bank and am offering you a fee to use your bank account..."). I don't want to go this route either since I can't seem to make the blog thing work well yet either.

Of course, it didn't hurt that I also brought in a plate full of cheesecake swirl fudge brownies - it never hurts to butter up people with brownies.

I've said before that the waiting room at the treatment clinic has provided me with opportunities to meet people who provide me with inspiration. The flip-side of this is that there are also people there who are scared - really scared. The "deer-in-the-headlights" look is pretty easy to spot on new patients (the big hospital binder that they give all the newbies is also a dead give-away). Last Thursday at the clinic, we ran into a couple who used to go to our church, but moved away a few years ago to enjoy retirement. We had heard that the man had been diagnosed with prostate cancer about the same time I received my diagnosis. We had heard that he had surgery to remove the tumor, but not much in the way of updates on the success of the surgery - we simply assumed that it had gone well and another success story was in the works. Well, that story didn't turn out to be quite so successful, and they were there to get some more opinions on more treatment. He was scared - a look that I hate to see on anyone there, but especially on someone that you know personally. I'm glad that we had a short time to speak with them and let them know that they were in good hands at "our" clinic, and reassured them that they weren't alone in their new fight. They don't do email so much, but I hope to try to help them as much as I can. I think we have a lot to talk about together.

I will post this - please let me know if you get any kind of notification that a new posting is available. Apparently this hasn't worked so well for everyone, so I will send a regular old email to you as well. Sure it's redundant, but I'm determined to try to make this work and get with the hipster blog community.
-bob