June 26th

 Hi All, 

Just a quick update on how things are going. Dennis finished his first round of chemo on June 13th. He didn't have any chemo last week. He had some intermittent low grade fevers all week. Then, Saturday night he was shaking uncontrollably. I took his temperature and it was 97 degrees. In less than 5 minutes it spiked to a 102.  I immediately called the  oncology office and left a message with the answering service. The oncologist on call was Dr Lewis, who happens to be treating Dennis's mom for her kidney cancer. He started Dennis on antibiotics that night. That has definitely helped. No more fever!

Dennis had an appointment this morning with his oncologist and was supposed to start Round 2 of chemo, today. But, with the high fever just a couple of days ago, Dr Spillane is having him skip this week's treatment. 

Dennis will have his blood drawn this Friday to see if his platelets have increased which I think means his immune system would be stronger. He is due to have chemo on Monday, July 3rd. We'll see if that happens. We don't want anything to postpone Dennis's surgery date and neither does Dr Spillane. 

Our first bump in the road: We got a letter in the mail last week from the Human Resources Dept at Dennis's work. They informed us that after 3 months of being on disability, we have to change over to a Cobra insurance plan. It was going to be effective starting June 30th.  Dennis called right away and explained that he has this major surgery happening in July, so they were kind enough to extend his current plan to end on July 31st. The good news is that what we've payed on our deductible and out of pocket amount this year will transfer over to the Cobra plan. Since Dennis will start on Medicare Part A, July 1st, we will sign him up for Part B and a supplement plan in a couple of months.

We have a request, please. If you leave a comment, will you please tell us who you are. Not everyone's name automatically appears!

I'll close with this quote I found:

'While optimism makes us live as if someday soon things will get better for us, hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, with deep trust that God will never leave us alone.'  Henri Nouwen

Blessings, 

Dennis and Sharon