Finally Back Home

This was supposed to be another infusion Friday but thinds did not go as planned. IVIG infusion was cancelled as they have some blood work questions and are doing additional blood work.

CT Scan came back with nearly identical results to the last time. Of course, that is fairly meaningless because those scans have never showed her cancer. AETNA has flatly refused to allow her to have a PET SCAN so we will remain in limbo with no idea if Sandi is in remission or not until some time next Spring or so when she goes on  Medicare.

Via the Houston Chronicle-- DMV prepares for sticker shock of losing inspection tag

This is going to make driving interesting.....

DMV prepares for sticker shock of losing inspection tag

Personally, I still believe the inspection deal is a waste of time and money and should be completely done away with immediately. It won't ever be stopped because it is a money deal for the state. 

When the zombies attack and those "lucky" enough to be alive are trying to survive and using horses to get around the horses will be inspected though the emissions test might change a bit.

Finally Back Home

Things ran very far behind today for a variety of reasons. One of which being they decided we have to pay a lot more upfront than we have been each month as insurance is taking longer and longer to process payments while attempting to cut back on what they will cover and and arguing bills. I don't think this is a coincidence. I have no doubt these problems have been caused by Wal-Mart termianting her unpaid medical leave and Atnea handling  her COBRA coverage.

Sandi's blood work is not any worse than it was last week so the decision was made to go ahead and start with the first round of immunizations. Her immunizations are way late, but the delays have been caused because of the fragility of her immune system and everything that goes along with that. She received six injections for that. They also want to add another drug for her lung function deal and since it is very expensive that has to approved first by insurance.

Assuming nothing bad happens, we go back in two weeks for more blood work and a doctor visit.

Sandi and Wal-Mart

Sandi is done at Wal-Mart. They notified her via certified mail just now that they will NOT be extending her unpaid medical leave. Not surprised. Her leave ended March 20th and that will probably be her termination date. No idea yet how much COBRA will be.

Sandi Back Home

Sandi is back home from the cancer doctor. Her blood work is okay so they plan on doing the second round of IVIG next Friday. That will be another multi hour infusion event deal that will occupy us most of the day. The doctor also did the paperwork to try and extend Sandi's unpaid medical leave for another six months. We have no idea if this will be approved, but we hope so. If it is not she is looking at COBRA to maintain her insurance and that is going to be insanely expensive.

Unfortunately, I was way too sick to go with her today. I have never ever missed one of her appointments before, but my stomach was a bit too shaky to be going out. I don't know if I had gotten the stomach virus that seems to be around here or if it is my colitis a bit worse than normal. Time will tell.

Lady Sandra: Clearance Christmas Items!!

 Sandi has marked down a bunch of things in hopes of raising a few bucks toward her cancer treatment stuff this month. New year with a new horrible deductible. Whatever inventory she has left after the 19th will be donated to a local church that has helped us from time to time for their use as they see fit.

Lady Sandra: Clearance Christmas Items!!: Today, January 12, 2014 until my birthday on January 19 th ; all Christmas items will be marked clearance in front of the item and pric...

Saturday Evening Update

Things are pretty much the same here. Sandi is making continuous heavy use of the oxygen concentrator and we see her numbers drop rapidly when she is off of it to go to the bathroom. The little $35 oxygen sensor I bought at the store was proven to be very accurate in the doctor's office so we have been checking her  a lot to see where she is at. She has a little more energy today, thanks to the powerful steroids she is now on, so she has been sitting with her computer in her lap and doing e-mail.

Sad to say she discovered she has had zero sales again this month despite her "Christmas In July" sale announced on her blog before she went into the hospital. Since she is virtually giving away stuff she thought she would get a couple of sales and instead got nada. Even the daily drive by looks she gets at her store at iOffer have dropped considerably. Maybe it is because everybody is doing some sale somewhere, I don't know. But, it is pretty discouraging.

We still don't know what her status is regarding social security disability and the rest of it. Supposedly, having a stem cell transplant is an automatic qualifier as well as the cancer she had and her hideous prognosis. No word yet.


I mentioned last week how we just got the paperwork to renew our food stamps. We filled that out this morning and mailed it today and again asked for Medicaid assistance along with the food stamps. Hopefully, something is in the system we don't know about and her approval is in the pipeline. Considering the food stamp renewal letter was dated July 3, 2013 and we just got it last week, it seems to me like there could have been a decision one way or the other and we just don't know it yet.

In the meantime, things continue to be very grim from a money standpoint. So, if you can, please make a donation via the handy dandy widget over to the left. Any amount helps. The monies raised go to the rent, utilities, food, gas for the car, parking at the hospital, medical bill payments (despite an installment plan both TEXAS RADIOLOGY and MEDICAL CITY DALLAS HOSPITAL --among others-- have turned some of the mountain of debt over to collection agencies--as if that changes our situation at all), Sandi's biweekly insurance premium of $95, her drugs, etc. The monies are not wasted and are very much appreciated.

I hate asking and I wouldn't if things were not desperate.  Feel free to share the news of our situation through social media or other venues if you would care to do so as we truly do need the help.

Kevin

Round Three Begins.....

and is off to a chaotic start. Sandi is back in Medical City Dallas Hospital for her third round of chemotherapy. I won't take you through how  the sequence of things has changed several times this afternoon. It doesn't matter because everything we were told planning wise when she was finally admitted at 11 am this morning and through out the day is out the window and has been blown away up into Oklahoma at this point.

The current plan is now that she started the first chemotherapy drug at six tonight. This first drug should finish sometime before midnight.

At some point tomorrow morning, they will do a blood transfusion into her. How much? We have been told wildly different amounts so we have to wait to actually find out. I suspect this will be determined after they see how she is tonight and what they get when they again pull the blood at 4am. She is definitely anemic again at this point and was early this morning.

At some point tomorrow, they will heavily sedate her and move her radiology where they will do a lumbar puncture and inject a chemotherapy drug directly into her spinal column. We are told this is a routine procedure during the third round of chemotherapy and is done so that the cancer does not retreat into her spinal column and go to her brain.

As of today, the plan is she comes home late Thursday. We have also been told that assuming the pet scan agrees, it is almost time to start harvesting stem cells. This is way earlier than we understood before. It also has become a huge hassle far beyond what it already was because Wal-Mart will only pay her Aetna insurance claims/benefits if she goes to one of three "Mayo Cancer Centers." They are located out in Scottsdale, Ariz., Jacksonville, Fla., and Rochester, Minn. The fact that I am permanently disabled and medically unable to fly, the fact we have two special needs boys, the fact we have no resources, etc. does not matter as no exceptions are made. Supposedly they will pay for her and one family member to travel and stay at the Mayo location to receive treatment. How that all works, we don't yet know. If, for example, they pay by reimbursement to the patient after the patient has paid for plane tickets, it won't work as we have no credit cards. You don't have credit cards when you are dead broke, have no job, and have no credit.

So, how this is all going to work is something that is seriously up in the air right now. Hopefully, as the week progresses, things will start to shake out and will work out. But, this is another stressor we did not need and an added complication as she has no business flying anywhere for anything.

Unfortunately, it seems like we have no choice in the matter.

Finally Home

We are finally home as, while they held off on the blood transfusion, they decided she needed a bag of magnesium as she was critically low. The hope is this will hep with her severe nausea. They are also taking her off of two drugs and adding two in the hopes of helping the nausea issues.

Because Texas Medicaid has not approved us yet I also had to sign a payment contract guaranteeing payments of $100 a month starting today. How we are going to pull that off I have no idea. In theory, while I had to pay it today, by next month they think the Medicaid should be approved as she is now officially classified in the paperwork as "terminal." Something I knew, but it was still very hard to hear that official diagnosis is now how she is being classified for the insurance, state programs, and other things.

The current plan is we go back Thursday morning for blood work. If she does not get better from an anemia standpoint or if it gets any worse, she will be admitted for the day while they do a blood transfusion. Next week she goes back in the hospital for the third round of chemo. Since insurance has suddenly reversed their denial and now approved her for the next medically necessary Pet Scan they are trying to do it next week while she is in the hospital already getting the chemo.

A Sandi Update

This Monday evening finds her tired and nauseated as she has been for the majority of the time the last several days. So far she has not actually thrown-up though it has been close a couple of times. The anti-nausea med helps as does wintergreen lifesavers. Despite being tired and taking lots of naps, she has not only used up all the yarn she had to make hats, she set up her blog http://lady-sandra.blogspot.com/ with a number of posts in the queue so that stuff would appear everyday.

Tomorrow we know for sure it is blood work and a doctor visit. That will determine whether we have to spend the day at the hospital so she can have a blood transfusion. Obviously we hope not!  Not only for her sake, but my own as well as I am not doing well. It is what it is and another thing to add to the worry list.

Our expectation is next week she will be back in for round three of chemotherapy. We do expect them to tell us that tomorrow regardless of the need for a blood transfusion.

We have not made the rent yet and the apartment office has granted us a two day reprieve to try and make rent. We also do not yet know what the status is on Texas Medicaid  or assistance from a cancer charity that works with cancer patients on paying insurance premiums, medical bills, etc. We need to know on this stuff and truly need the help and we get the run around and no answers.

Yet, the things we don't need just keep coming. Last week Sandi was summoned for jury duty  so we filled out their form and sent it back with medical documentation showing her situation. Considering what she is going through and her status the idea of her being on a jury right now is impossible.

Today we got eight medical bills totaling 18k plus we somehow now owe and four demand letters from a law firm specializing in debt collection over a couple of her private student loans. That totals in just under 15k allegedly. From the form letters we can't tell which student loan company, despite knowing our situation and despite the fact she is supposed to be on some sort of deal where they postpone payments, went ahead and turned a debt collector on us.  Needless to say, this upset her horribly tonight and did god knows what damage to her fragile state.

I finally got her calmed down and  will deal with the student loan mess later this week. Tomorrow I expect to be gone all day and will update when I can.

PET SCAN UPDATE

Sandi's insurance will not allow her to have a Pet Scan again until after April 8. We don't know why it is this way. That will be about the time for her to be back in the hospital again for the next round of chemo so we hope that maybe they can do the PET SCAN while she is hospitalized.

Hope It Is True

As I spend a beautiful Sunday wasting my time and my life by writing more appeal letters to Sandi's insurance company, cease and desist letters to collection agencies, and update yet again the paperwork for our food stamps that we have yet to receive, I truly hope the below is true. If not, I may be able to appear on a future episode of "Hoarders."

The Latest Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arkansas Insurance Stupidity

It just never stops.

The mail yesterday brought another very unwelcome letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arkansas. They have been Sandi's insurance company the last couple of years through her job at Wal-Mart. They screw-up a lot and manage to create huge problems for the doctors as well as us. Her coverage with them ended at the end of the year as she, like everyone else at Wal-Mart, was shifted over to Aetna with a higher deductible and lower coverage. One hopes they will be better as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arkansas constantly interfered in Sandi's medial care by refusing to pay claims correctly, listing her as not having insurance because they had failed to credit her premuim payments in a timely manner, and numerous other issues. Just last month they re-figured her knee surgery bills again for the sixth time and suddenly denied services they had authorized back in in October 2011. Of course that was appealed.

I wasn't surprised when they pulled that re-figuring deal as they have been trying to get out of things since Sandi was diagnosed with cancer. They constantly pull this sort of thing on all sorts of bills--whether they are hers or on Scott as he is on her insurance---and blame new federal regulations when that isn't remotely true or something else bogus. It is what they do and are very well known for such tactics according to the medical folks we have to deal with.

So, I wasn't surprised when they denied the initial claim for Sandi's Pet Scan back in December.  They always deny the pre-authorization and the initial claim as they say it isn't medically necessary. The fact that she was a cancer patient in remission and had to be checked every three months wasn't relevant. Having gone through this each and every time, putting us and the doctors through a lot of stress and paperwork, I thought I knew what game they were playing and therefore wasn't worried.

But, yesterday they reached a new height in stupidity. They have again denied the December Pet Scan saying "medical criteria" was not met. They know the Pet Scan found Sandi's cancer was back. They also know and--at this point--paid correctly the claims for the two surgeries she had in December that were attempts to get pathology samples from the mass by her heart. So, they denied the test that found her cancer and yet had no problems paying the hospital bills that were incurred trying to get pathology samples of the same cancer.

Makes as much sense to me as paying a claim for treatment of a severe sunburn and then denying the sun exists.

So, we will appeal yet again and send a copy to the doctor so that his staff can again send the paperwork documenting again what they already know. We will also forward a copy of everything to Texas Health and Human Services since, once they get their stuff together and approve us for food stamps and Medicaid, they will automatically investigate and review all her medical stuff. Like the medical folks, they are well aware of this insurance company and have had to assist us with this kind of problem before.

It is just ridiculous how Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arkansas consistently makes everything harder than it  has to be......

Please

Please, please "chipin" if you can.   We truly need your help and are begging. I don't know how to make it any plainer the real trouble we are in right now.

Update---PET SCAN Tuesday

Finally back home from the hospital. Sandi's diabetes was better today so they were able to do the PET SCAN. Results Friday Morning. This will tell us if there has to be more chemo--- as expected. Sandi remains strongly optimistic that she is fine and the cancer is gone. Friday we will know.


I'm exhausted. My back  and leg is killing me so I am done for today.


Kevin