I had to send an email to my entire office today. Not to tell them that I had cancer, but to tell them that there is a stupid freaking tumor about the size of a quarter expanding in my brain pushing brain matter out of its greedy way and increasing the risk of seizure. I felt like it was time to let people know what is going on and to let them know how to help me if I do have an episode. That also let me include a shameless plug to the blog… so for all of you RFLers… Welcome! You have no idea how much I love you guys, love my job, love what you do, and love serving you every day. You change people’s lives and it makes a bad day at work okay knowing that you guys make many bad days much better for a lot of people out there. Thank you.
Okay, so enough of that. I found out yesterday that I am approved physically, medically and insurance-ically for the trial. I got a call from a case manager at the insurance company who also told me that I should be eligible for travel reimbursement now. That means they will pay for gas, all meals, parking and hotel for our trips to Houston. I called the travel people and they said the same thing and emailed me all the paperwork. I also got a call from MD Anderson and they finally said that they can give me the meds. I had some flexibility on the date to get them so I actually asked my boss which day would be best and we both agreed Tuesday would be a better day. I have missed key meetings on Mondays for five weeks in a row and have not worked a full five day work week in eight out of nine weeks due to travel, and this week will be another. I only get so much time off and have been working extra hours to make up time so that I don’t have to use so many days. Right now I am planning on driving to Houston and back on Tuesday. We’ll have Holly’s niece Elizabeth and nephew Cole with us this week, so I’m going to have to drive by myself since [two 6-7 year olds] + [6-7 hours on the road] = murder. I’ve been trying to find someone to go with me, but no luck so far. Any takers?
Wednesday will be my first day on the trial. The nurse said I will definitely need some anti-nausea medication and they are going to give it to me. I am not looking forward to it, but am ready to get started. There’s a lot I want to share about the past few weeks but I’ll have to save that for another post since it’s so late. By the way, if you use some type of news or feed reader, you can follow the blog by clicking the links at the right of the webpage or you can scroll to the bottom of the page and sign up for it to be emailed to you whenever we post an update. It’s free and your email address won’t be sold or anything. Stay tuned as we embark on this journey… it should be… um… interesting. And barfy.
-Roger
