Anything worth doing is worth re-doing...

I'm staring out the window at about 5 inches of fresh powder, capped off with a sheet of ice. We in Atlanta are paralyzed by the weather -- trapped in our homes-- so what better time to blog.

So my oncolgist at Vanderbilt who decided to do those 'new' tests over the Holdiay sent the results to my hem-onc here in Atlanta. When they saw this info, the folks here at Emory decided to re-do the same test in their lab.

I went in on Friday to bleed yet again into a number of tubes. The test results will come in any day now. The logic, I am told, is that they need to have a baseline in their labs if I am to start IVIG treatment under my care team here.

They confirmed that if the IgG levels are low (they tend NOT to fluctuate, so we expect they will still be low), they will then make a case to insurnace to cover the treatments. Apparently this is normal for such procedures.

Since the average IVIG patient costs $120,000/year, I am sure my insurance carrier will be thrilled to see little ol' me asking for them to spend even more on my care. I bet they thought they were done with me and were only having to pay for 4 CTs, labs, doc visits, etc. per year at this point.

The most common blood cancer patients that end up neeing IVIG infusions are the chronic leukemias (CLL) and some of the follicular (slow-growing) lymphomas. It is rare that a patient such as me with an aggressive lymphoma would need IVIG.

So far, everything has been flawless with respect to my healthcare coverage, so I expect no less this time. I am a huge fan of health insurance, disability policies, and life insurance so if you want to talk about any of these, just email me.

They would concur that six months of infusions would be appropriate, proir to a remeasurement of my levels. All of the infusions would be outpatient. Awesome. And, unlike the chemo, these would be infusions that would theoretically help me feel better as opposed to feeling worse...so I am giddy at the thought.

OK- back to staring at the beautiful white landscape: we don't get this treat too often.