2/7/2011

The reentry into Velcade after a month off has proven to be more challenging than I thought. The first week I caught a stomach bug from Fox and had to postpone my chemo for a day. The rest of the week and weekend I didn't feel great but was unsure if it was the bug or the velcade. The second week was not as bad stomach wise but it's clear to me that some of the side effects I was attributing to the steroids were actually from the velcade.

My creatinine has been inching up and last week was at 3.55. That can happen when you are fighting an infection or virus but if it's up again this week I'm going to contact Dr. Leung and see if he wants me to go back up on the steroids. Right now I take 2 on Tuesday and 2 on Friday. I feel better on the lower steroids but I have to maintain my kidney function as well.

The new Cancer Center at RUSH is beautiful and running fairly smoothly. The check-in, check-out process still needs some tweaking in my opinion but everything else is smooth sailing. There are many new faces and thankfully all the old ones as well.

Because of the new procedures at the Cancer Center I haven't scheduled anything with Dr. Gautier (therapist) since I returned from Mayo but I'm feeling good about things overall. I'm still having billing issues on that end and it's frustrating because all someone has to do is change a code. Unfortunately I am not the person that can do that even though they keep calling me.