No Surrender, Revisited

I am grateful to wake up this morning with treatment #3 behind me. Several times during the 6 hour delay I wanted to give up, I want to go home. Then I thought about how many hours I had already invested and didn’t want to give that up. I knew if I left with all the unresolved issues I’d have no guarantee of getting them solved. So I insisted the pharmacy and the staff keep going to get the roadblocks cleared to get my treatment started. And I woke up this morning feeling like I crossed the finish line of an Ironman!

Here was my appointments for the day: 9:30 Lab Visit; 10:30 AM Telemedicine Visit with Research Nurse; 11:00 AM Telemedicine Visit with Nurse Practitioner; 11:30 Treatment. Besides issues with the telemedicine system (system was down) we got thru the first three scheduled appointments. Although I have some low numbers connected with red blood cells I was cleared for treatment, all orders were already in. I checked in again near the treatment area to check if there were delays and was told there was not.

And the 6 hour delay began. I am not unreasonable, I do understand that issues come up and sometimes there are delays. After waiting 45 minutes I asked one of the staff from treatment if they could check on my status. She checked my wristband and said yes, she’d be back. I never saw her again. I waited another half hour and walked halfway across the building to a service kiosk to check again. The woman called treatment and after a few minutes she told me there was an issue and someone would be out shortly to let me know what was going on. 15 more minutes and nothing. Someone came out for another patient and his time I stood up, stopped her and said I need answers and I need them now. She said someone would be right back, and she was. I was brought to s treatment room almost two hours after my scheduled appointment and the first issue was explained to me. Understandable – one of my numbers raised a red flag on my dosage of carboplatin and it took two hours of phone calls and emails to clear my dosage. I blame the length of time on people working remotely and the need for constant phone calls, messages and waiting for call backs. And the lack of communication to me had my frustration and stress level in the red.

But, I’m in a treatment suite and we are cleared to mix my drugs. Should only be a few minutes. It didn’t take long for me to realize things weren’t going as planned. All good with the carboplatin and the gemxitabine (which I had received in treatment #2 at Monmouth). Red flag on the pembrolizumab, which is the immunotherapy drug. Seems that Monmouth was not “authorized” to dispense. It took four hours to get it through all the red tape. It took multiple phone calls, emails portal messages, every manager and more! About two hours into the wait I started thinking I’d just go home, let them work things out and then come back the next day to finish. Then I thought about how many hours I had already invested and realized I couldn’t just DNF. I hadn’t accomplished the primary goal of the day – get treatment! I think the nurse manager snd the pharmacy manager were a bit surprised but I knew I had to keep my foot on the accelerator.

They did keep me informed and shortly after 5 PM the pharmacy manager came back and said we did it and they were s out to finish mixing my drugs. Pre-treatment drugs started, snd just before my nurse finished her shift at 5:30 she had the carboplatin running. By 7:20 PM we were done and I headed to the parking lot. There was only one other car there.

This song helped me get through the day, as borrowed from Seth Avett’s helloclove Instagram. Thank you!