September 11, 2008 (Thursday)

Well, our happy bouncing girls was back in action. She arrived home just after noon and before long her and her sister had torn up the living room. She was so excited to see everyone and make sure everyone heard her say, "I'm back!" So she was and we were glad to have her. Then we proceeded to look at the schedule for the coming month. Anti-nausea drugs as needed, antibiotics three days a week, shots to increase blood counts for 7 to 14 consecutive days, blood tests at least twice a week, special mouthwash 4 times a day, etc. Then we also need to try to keep her from hitting the area of her chest where the port-a-cath is, this is difficult given her tendency to jump off of and onto anything she can find. But she is sure a delight and we are excited to have her back in our home.

Everything seemed to go fine in Houston and Gracie will have round 2, the second weekend (Thurs-Sat) in October. Then this afternoon, we headed out to pick up prescriptions for all the medications that our oncologist prescribed. The pharmacy did not have the drugs on hand so we said that we could wait until tomorrow. We went home and an hour later got a message from the pharmacist saying that two of the drugs prescribed were not covered by our healthcare plan and would be expensive. Some compromises had been made and we could get a portion of one of the drugs at a reduced cost but the other drug was not covered. Why our plan does not cover anti-nausea or pain-relieving ointment for pediatric cancer patients is beyond me but we made several phone calls to our case manager at our insurance company. She gave us some suggestions to finding the drug at a lower cost and ideas on trying to get the drug approved and/or covered some other way. After several attempts to do so there was little progress made. Apparently this is a battle with the insurance company and pharmaceutical benefits company that will go one for more than a couple hours. I do not know if there are similar drugs covered or not that our oncologist could prescribe. The hurricane in Houston has cut of some of the contact with the medical staff there for now. We are confident that it will all work out but it is still just one more thing to think about when there are important things, like Gracie, to worry about.

Thank you all for your prayers and love. We have especially appreciated them over the past week and Gracie seems to have started this process on a really positive note!