No News is Good News

Julie had a routine checkup with the doctor.  All is okay.  The dioxycyclene, an antibiotic to keep Julie from getting infections in her hair follicles, makes her sick.  We told the doctor and she prescribed instead some cream, very good creme, at $140 a tube.  She couldn't tell if she gave us the right one, which was topically applied, or the one for inserting in the vagina.  She asked me to explain it to the pharmacist if she picked the wrong one.  Lucky, we support our pharmacist well.

The only other problem is that Dr. Hosford told us during the exam that Julie did not have to get another blood test to check her calcium before getting Zometa, (ZOMETA® (zoledronic acid) to help prevent skeletal-related events (SREs) in patients with advanced malignancies involving bone metastases. a drug to keep her bones strong to limit cancer's access).  She told to tell the techies to just go ahead and give the Zometa and tell them that she said it was okay.  Of course, the techies wouldn't take Julie's word for it and then called the doctor who forgot what she told us.  This has been repeated now three times and Julie has missed three doses.

Julie has a bad tooth and there is concern that the Zometa will cause some kind of degeneration of the jaw bone.  But, Julie had the dentist, doctor Dow, look at it and he said no worries.  Dr. Hosford keeps saying she is going to call the dentist and discuss it. However, this has been an ongoing discussion for months now without resolution. 

So, all is kind of going well.  Doctors are just too busy and they do not do a good job communicating with each other.  They apparently won't use email because of privacy concerns, but it sure seems like this is what they need.  Some lawyer / bureaucrat has made this decision for us and save us from our data getting lose on the Internet.  Thanks.  They have also limited the flow of communication between doctors.  Anyone heard of secure emails, encryption, etc.

Julie stays tired a lot but seems to doing okay.  She still gets diarrhea from her Tykerb many nights and has indigestion a lot, but that may just be a price of staying alive. Our daughters still don't get it. Olesia has got herself a job, two boyfriends, and manages to do the grocery shopping for us.  She doesn't help around the house unless we ask her to do something, which she does, but she doesn't volunteer much.  Allison was coming down for the week, but I haven't seen her yet.  She was recovering from her two weeks of vacation after graduation.  She has finally made a resume and started working the job boards some.  She is trying to find a job in just the cities she wants to live in Philadelphia, Charlotte, or Charleston.  I read recently that only 19% of the graduates this year are getting jobs.  She is also considering waitress jobs until she finds a real job, but she will be hard pressed to pay off $95K of college loans and her rent, etc. with a waitressing job.  She also needs to take an exam to get her therapy license, but does not seem to be in a big hurry.  I guess I am the enabler.

One last thing.  Julie just got requested to serve on a jury.  Now, that is interesting.