Thursday, January 29, 2015

January Update

It has been too long since the last update and for that I apologize.

First, I had a great trip to visit my brothers. My last posting was from the Amtrak train going to New York City. I had a great visit with Ken, Yoko and Izzi for a couple of days and then Ken, Izzi and I headed to the Poconos to visit my other brother (Ron) and his family which includes most of my niece and nephew collection. They are always fun. We had a great visit. I returned to Westwood on the Amtrak - traveling coach this time. It seemed pretty much identical to Business Class except for the $38 up-charge.

So, now we are in Meredith having recovered from the recent snow storm. We hunkered down and stayed mostly inside, being extra careful to keep the wood stove fully stoked. Around here, the term "Logging On" has more than one meaning.

Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed in the job done by the guy who plows our driveway. He usually does a pretty sloppy job, so I have to out there with the tractor and sort of clean up after him. But this time I was really upset. He did a really great job and there was no cleanup necessary.

Fortunately, our neighbor (my tractor partner) came through. He is recovering from hip replacement. When I called him, he said he could use some tractor cleanup, so Barbara grabbed a shovel and hopped onto the back of the tractor and the two of us headed over there.

I am currently on a break week after the second cycle of the reduced dosage chemo regimen. Unfortunately, the numbers after the first cycle do not look particularly good. They seem to be headed strongly in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, we don't get the numbers until after we meet with the doctor, so we don't know what this means. We meet with the doctor next Wednesday and I am guessing that he might want to make some changes, but I have no idea what they will be. I will report what he says.

I am happy to report that I have already reached "co-pay-day" for 2015. This is the day when I have made all the payments I have to make up to the co-pay limit. We selected a policy that has a very high co-pay limit - the highest offered in fact. Up to this limit, I pay for all drugs and treatments. After this limit, the insurance company takes over. We reached co-pay-day on January 10 this year.
I think it was Jan 12 for 2014. And that was for just one of the four significant chemo drugs I take. I have no idea what all this treatment is costing, but I would not buy stock in my insurance company.

And speaking of great, we are now moved into our apartment at Fox Hill Village and very much enjoying being there. Unless they change our treatment schedule, our plan is to spend 8 days at Fox Hill to cover our two Wednesday treatments and then spend the next 13 days in Meredith. It is nice to not be going back and forth as much.

I am getting used to the redone apartment. Last week, I tried to turn the kitchen water on by twisting the soap dispenser. The control panel for the washing machine looks like something that would confuse the folks at NASA. I think I am going to have to take a course on this thing at MIT. Either that or not do laundry.

We are heading back down to Westwood on Tuesday. I have signed up for a couple of interesting activities via GroupOn. I will tell you about those in the next report.