Infusions, Steroids & CT Angio

December 16, 2008

Hello all,

Here is an update as I promised on the latest of my treatments. Last Friday I began my infusions at UCLA. All went well and my body did beautifully with the medications. Along with the second set of steroids for this month. And great news is the medication we had been waiting for was delivered to me this morning!!! Thank you Lord!

There was a huge hang up with our insurance not wanting to approve this medication for some reason, but we think we finally figured out what the problem was. For the past 4 weeks they claimed they didn't have enough clinical information and kept saying they needed more in order to approve it. Well, Saturday night we received a call from the Specialist at UCLA saying that some of my blood work came back abnormal for and thought I might have had blood clotting, so he told Greg to take me to ER immediately for a CT Angio test to rule out a possible Pulmonary Embolism. Which you can imagine was was scary he was thinking there might be blood clotting which could be fatal if it traveled to the heart or brain. But thank God the Scan didn't show any clotting. But the scan did show pitting of the bones after all in my upper back where all the pain is. That would explain everything now. And this is the reason for the insurance approving this 3rd medicine on the spot. This has been the missing link that the insurance company needed to release the Chemo drug.

We believe this call Saturday night was a God send because if my Doctor had not called for us to go in for the Angiogram they probably wouldn't have detected the bone pitting for quite sometime since I've already done most of my scans recently. Another good thing is that while I was at UCLA for my treatment on Friday The Dr decided to start a bone treatment even though he didn't see anything wrong with my bones at the time he thought it would be a good idea to ease up the pain and at the same time it would strengthen and restore any damage to the bone if necessary. We think he must have had a gut feeling or inclination that the pitting was soon to come.

Overall, I have been feeling significantly better since Friday so far so we are very excited to see what the next 11 treatments has in store for me. Please keep the prayers going as you can see God is moving and answering your prayers quickly and most of all giving me the peace and the strength to get through this and to be strong for my family as well.

Just thought to give you a heads up on the latest, so I start my third Chemo drug tonight, hopefully my body will take well to this one as well.

Thank you again for your faithfulness,

Debbie