Missing Stanford?

Sometimes we really miss Stanford where you have everything you need in one place. Here in Las Vegas, sometimes we need to go several places to get anything done. When you add in referrals and insurance approvals, it can make life really difficult. Adrienne has had trouble with vaginal bleeding since the start of the trial. The onc told her to see a gynecologist, he ran all the standard tests including an ultrasound, and the answer was for her to double or triple her birth control pill, which is used for hormone replacement in her case. Adrienne started bleeding again 9 days ago. By Saturday, it was so heavy that I took her to the ER to get her platelets checked. In most places, you can go somewhere on the weekend just to get blood checked but in Las Vegas, you have to go to the ER. After a $100 copay and three hours of our Saturday afternoon, we found that her platelets were low but not that low and we were sent on our way with instructions to see the gynecologist on Tuesday morning (today). Adrienne had early clinic at NVCI and I had them call the gynecologist to figure out what to do. Sometimes, you get caught in the finger pointing where no one wants to do anything and that obviously isn't working here. The gynecologist said this was beyond him and they referred her to a gynecological oncologist. I'm not sure why NVCI can't help since they must have a few of those, but they can't. After waiting a few hours for a call about an appointment, I made several phone calls only to find out that no one can see Adrienne until Thursday afternoon. Not good enough. After a bit of begging, she now she has an appointment tomorrow morning (Wednesday). Her counts are low, not quite low enough for a transfusion, but low enough to make her feel pretty lousy. Hopefully we'll get some answers tomorrow morning.

Gus is still entertaining us. We've actually been weighing him on a kitchen scale (yes, he's that small) and he's gone from about 2 pounds to almost 3 pounds. Wow. We gave him a bath and trimmed his hair this weekend. Now he looks a little cleaner and still just as cute.

Adrienne's school is going well, a bit easier than CMC but still time consuming. CMC will accept all of her credits and she'll still be able to graduate in May, so we're all happy about that. Some friends of her's from CMC came by on the weekend on their way from the midwest back to school and we enjoyed some interesting political discussions. I thought Adrienne might be sad that she wasn't going with them, but she seems to be taking everything in stride these days.