Bob the great and a few other things

I’d been wondering why it was taking so long to get Ernie’s radiation set up. We found out on Thursday.

We met with our radiation oncologist and his dosimetrist (a word new to me). The dosimetrist, who actually creates the plan, said he’d worked for 11 1/2 hours trying to get a plan that wouldn’t do more damage than good, to no avail. They can’t do the radiation on Ernie’s tumor. They went through it all with us. The doctor said that what Ernie experienced about a year ago with all the ER visits and the catheters would probably be the very least of side effects that would happen. They gave us printouts of the scans, etc. in case we want a second opinion but honestly, I got the sense that they don’t think another radiation oncologist would touch it either. I trust our doctor implicitly. Ernie’s just had too much radiation in that area. If things spread to other areas of his body he might be able to get radiation, but not in that same spot. Masks are helpful in some situations as my dancing bear mask covered my wobbly mouth. Not that they couldn’t see the tears seeping out every so often. They were very kind.

So. I guess we’re just status quo right now and will continue with the Xtandi. Oh, and somewhere in all this, the specialty pharmacy we deal with said Ernie’s grant for the chemo is over for the year, meaning we would owe the copay ($2,600) for this last month. Many, many calls later, and kudos to the folks in the pharmacy that worked through all this for us, he will be getting his pills directly from the company, no copay. No more local delivery to our door from Carle, now it will be Fed Ex.

At least his radiation stuff won’t conflict with my hysterectomy stuff. Geez, life is strange. Thanks to all who have messaged me about hysterectomy experiences, etc. It’s really helpful. I think this is one of those things that we don’t talk about a lot for whatever reason. I’m just WAY past trying to be polite or diplomatic about any of this shit. I’m hoping COVID doesn’t throw off the schedule for my surgery. I read that the Carle in Bloomington was starting to defer elective surgeries. Ugh.

Ok, something more cheerful to end on. Let’s see.

I shared the Jean and Jorts cat saga with Ernie (DO read it if you haven’t yet–and the update) and instead of finding it funny he thought I was insulting Bob. He was not pleased. Of course, this is the man who, in the middle of dinner, was so overcome with love for Bob (who was just sitting staring at him) that he had to set his plate aside to hug him.

Onward.