Visit to Georgetown

Today Vicki held her regular appointment with Dr. Marshall at Georgetown University Hospital's Lombardi Cancer Center. In the discussions Vicki asserted that the pain she has been experiencing has significantly degraded her quality of life, and I agree based on my observations over the past few months. This past week she has spent nearly all of her time in bed and all of her time in pain.

Dr. Marshall gave Vicki the option of cancelling her chemotherapy treatment, which Vicki agreed to. This will provide Vicki a little longer break and hopefully help her regain strength for our annual trip with her family to Myrtle Beach in early July. Her next appointment and chemotherapy treatment will be July 11th.

Dr. Marshall also called in a specialists in palliative care and pain management, Dr. Andrew Putnam. Dr. Putnam spent a significant amount of time interviewing Vicki to learn more on the details of the pain she has been experiencing. He made some recommendations for slight modifications in the dosage of some of the pain medications and asked her to follow up with him on Thursday. We liked Dr. Putnam because he spent a great deal of time listening to Vicki's concerns and seemed to think he may be able to help her.

Vicki will also have an appointment with her new gastroenterologist on Thursday, Dr. Axelrad. We are hoping he has some idea of how to control and alleviate the symptoms of Vicki's Ulcerative Colitis. So far he has not shown us that he has anything better to offer than Vicki's previous gastroenterologist, but at least his office is closer.

I have spent this week trying to resolve several mistakes by our mail order pharmacy, MEDCO. In addition to these problems, an employee at UPS has either stolen or lost one of the narcotic pain relief presriptions MEDCO had sent Vicki. I am filing a prescription drug fraud report with the County Sherrif's office this week on the matter. In the meantime, Vicki has run out of an important pain medication so we obtained an emergency prescrition from Georgetown today. Believe it or not, every week I have something like this, a fouled up bill, prescription, appointment, or similar event. This is par for the course in medical administration.

In fact, the whole series of events has raised my stress level past the breaking point. Taking care of a terminally ill spouse, two kids, a dog, a house, working a full time job, and dealing with all of the associated problems that go along with these has proven to be too much. I am forgetting more than I remember. I suppose many things will just have go undone and in the end it may not matter much. I look at tomorrow and I really don't even see how I'll get through it.