We'll Take It

Trip had a follow up yesterday with Dr. Appel. She agrees that his skin has greatly improved and even thinks the eye bulging has gone down a little more, which hopefully means the mass in the orbital area is shrinking. She sent us to radiology for his skeletal survey. He was the perfect patient and almost knows how to position himself for the numerous “pictures” since he has been through it so many times.

Dr. Appel called last night to tell us the bone lesions look stable and a few are slightly improved. Of course we want all the lesions to be gone/healed, but we’ll take this. It means we can stay on methotrexate for the time being, which means we can count on him tolerating the drug well (not the hospital stay – the drug). She plans to give him two more rounds of chemo then do an MRI to check the existing mass and make sure the brain hasn’t been affected further. If things continue to improve on methotrexate, he will possibly continue it for the next 4-5 months and then hopefully move to an oral chemo for 6 months after that. We know at this point, we can’t count on anything to stay the same (especially treatment), but we hope this best-case scenario plays out to be true.

Last night I started on the mounds of medical bills that have been piling up since the beginning of the year. I was tired and didn’t want to look at them but just wanted to add them up and write a check. I’m thankful I sucked it up and went through them all because I found so many errors: wrong patient name/services, wrong company name that resulted in out-of-network claims, misapplied coinsurance. Those errors resulted in $2k overbilling that I would have missed if I had been lazy. Today’s lesson: always, always check and double check medical bills.

We are gearing up for Hike for a Cure in Austin on March 24. We have so many friends and their families participating and feel so blessed. The fund raising efforts have amazed me so far and give me hope that one day our efforts will lead to a cure. Together we will fund a CURE! http://www.active.com/donate/h4ac-texas