Round 9 and Expensive Drugs

I got juiced up this afternoon with chemo for my 9th round. It went well but it could have been better. Andrew was up all night last night barfing his brains out. Every half hour or so he would wake up and toss his cookies. Finally after we ran out of sheets for his crib we brought him into our bed. This was marginally better than having to get up and walk to his room every half hour as it did result in our getting some sleep. He continued barfing all day and couldn't hold anything down. All he wanted was water or milk or coke or beer to drink but whatever we gave him came right back up. Poor guy. So Penny and I were not in the best shape for chemo. We were very tired but managed to stay awake playing crib and chatting with nurses and a couple of other young people there that were recieveing treatment. There was another guy there from EnCana just starting out on his battle and a young mother doing her first round of chemo for her Hodgkins lymphoma. It's heartbreaking to see new people being diagnosed and starting treatment. Make no mistake - cancer is a horrible disease.

At my doctor appointment this week we discussed using a drug called neulasta. This particular drug is used to boost the white blood cell count of people on chemotherapy. It acts by stimulating blood cell production in the long bones and has proven to be very effective. My blood counts haven't been recovering as well lately as they did early on so we opted to give the neulasta a try. The only catch is it's VERY expensive ($2600.00 PER INJECTION! - one injection per round of chemo). In order to pay for it you either need deep pockets, or a good great prescription drug program. Luckily the program I have through work is very comprehensive and pays for the entire cost of the drug! Of course I consider myself very lucky to have been working for a great company like EnCana when I was diagnosed. Also, I get my prescriptions filled at Safeway, where you get air miles on prescriptions. In fact right now they have a incentive program on that rewards you for each prescription you fill. It gives you 7x the normal number of airmiles. So when I went to pick up my $2600.00 prescription, I also got 903 airmiles which happens to be enough for one return ticket to Victoria in the off season. With three more rounds to go and possibly three more injections of neulasta, I could have enough air miles to take the whole family to Victoria! Imagine that. Apparently it does pay to have cancer!

On the butt drain front things are back to the painful and uncomfortable. I seem to have irritated it again when I flushed it out this afternoon. I'm now back to the pain, difficulty walking and difficulty sitting. Of course that has lead to the use of oxycodone, a pretty effective painkiller. I guess I'll just soldier on through these last 4 chemo treatmets and worry about a solution for the drain when I'm all done.