Surgery on the 25th

Surgery is scheduled!!!!! In the last two days things have steadily been falling into place. It was as if God was testing our patience, just making sure we can't forget about His hand in all of this. Nice play, it worked. :)

We have a date set for Monday, January 25^th, in St. Louis with Dr. Moley. It's a little later than we were hoping and we were somewhat disappointed at first but it lowers our stress level in getting things such as places to stay, people to watch Ariyah, our work schedules figured out, and greatest of all, insurance waivers to go through. The 25^th is the ''soonest'' day Dr. Moley could fit us in. He rearranged his surgery schedule for that week for us and his wonderful right hand woman, Kim, was able to find us an extra OR suite & staff after some hassling.

Yesterday Scott spent another few hours on the phone and actually had to go into our Neuroendocrin Surgical Oncologist's office and helped the staff there get the waiver submitted for surgery at Wash U to be covered as In-Network (aka – the bill to be paid in full). Humana has “approved” it for Out of Network (something they act like is a big favor and although I'm pretty sure you don't usually get “approved” for Out of Network. That's the point of them only paying 50% then, right?) So, the waiver is submitted and we should know by next Monday what the verdict is.

Scott also got more lab work done yesterday. We're following his Calcitonin levels and testing him for pheochromocytoma. Dr. Morgan, our wonderful family practice doctor, is starting Scott on experimental therapy with low dose Naltrexone (Narcan) – a drug they normally use for Heroine and other Opiate drug overdose. In low, continuous doses it has been showing promising results in other forms of immunodeficient illnesses such as Multiple Sclerosis, Crohn's disease, and some forms of cancer. It's never contraindicated, so we figure it can't hurt to at least attempt to kick his immune system into high gear before surgery. And if that helps kill off a few cancer cells on the way, nice bonus.