The Tumornator: Tom's updates

The holiday break has been in full swing at the Martindale household.  The girls have been enjoying and making the most of their time off school.  We've had a decent amount of sleep overs, friends, and hanging out at home!  Tom and I spent Christmas eve morning getting his 4th chemo treatment of this current regimen.  His weight continues to hang out around 143lbs and his labs looked good.  Good news--his CA 19-9 came down this week after our mini rise last week.  It's 109, so heading back in the right direction!   Chemo side effects are about the same, fatigue, achy joints/muscles...and a new one of skin irritation/rash.  It's primarily been showing up around hair follicles, so his head and beard area have been itchy or some painful bumps.  We've been working with suggested shampoo, face wash, and creams in attempts to be more comfortable.  Not sure if this is something that will persist with his chemo or if it will resolve at some...

 So--turns out it's been a couple weeks since my last blog update 😲 We've been in a bit of a holding pattern doing all the "normal" things...work, school, chemo--repeat.  The girls are officially out of school for the next 2 weeks and I'm ecstatic because they were struggling to get up and out the door.  Tom had chemo last week 12/17 and will have his next dose this coming Wed, 12/24.  His weight is up again slightly hovering between 140-145 and his overall lab work (hemoglobin, hematocrit, platelets, and neutrophils) were all back up looking good!   Slight hiccup for the first time in 7ish months, his CA 19-9 didn't drop--it increased super minimally from 119 to 123.  While this might have triggered a mini spiral and panic last week--our oncology team is overall unconcerned as the trend is certainly downward.  His levels will be drawn again this week and we're hoping for a decrease obviously.   Tom's feeling ok-ish most days, but is ha...

Tom's chemo was bumped up by a day this past week (Tuesday 11/25) in hopes of feeling better for Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, in what is becoming an annoying trend--we had issues with the insurance company 😖 We arrived, had lab work done, and did a partial office visit while I was chatting with an insurance representative on my cell and the prior authorization office at the physician's office was also calling them.  The office here in Des Moines also had to call University of Iowa (they were recently purchased) to get an estimate of cost for the medications before they would mix the chemo.  Apparently it's a requirement of their pharmacy, fun fact it was about $7k.   Luckily we did get final and full approval for the visit and chemo infusion, but it took about an extra hour and half.  One of the medications is bound to albumin (so it's milky white) which is why it's so pricey...and then takes longer to mix.  However this new chemo includes 2 medicati...