Monday, February 2 - Tuesday, February 3: APPROVED

I won't bury the lede: our insurance claim for ribociclib (kisqali) was APPROVED on Tuesday afternoon! I am, frankly, surprised. But so happy. The other medication choice was absolutely valid, and I'll likely be on it at some point; but the side effects are more intense, so I'm glad to be able to choose this fulvestrant + kisqali protocol right now. There are also side effects from this one, of course. But different. (A compromised/decimated immune system is one of them, so I'll be back to masking in public.) 

After the peer-to-peer discussion failed to happen again on Monday, I'd pretty much assumed it would never happen. However, it actually did happen on Tuesday, and I was told I'd have an answer within 24-48 hours. But within one hour, I got a notification that the insurance has approved the treatment, and I was able to call the speciality pharmacy to arrange delivery of the pills for Thursday. 

Glad to have this in place. The eighteen-wheeler is revving its engine, its wheels slowly gaining traction in the giant snowbank in which they've been stuck thanks to the buckets of sand and salt hurled my way by a helpful stranger (ie, my terrifying but brilliant oncologist who definitely presented a strong case for kisqali to the insurance rep) (the metaphor is inconsistent and ever-changing; I won't apologize). Onward, forward, all the rest.

The kids had their annual checkups on Tuesday morning. A PA did their exams since we couldn't schedule with their regular doc, and she asked a question about whether they'd had a particular vaccine. "THEY'VE HAD EVERY VACCINE," I said, in a definitely unnecessarily strident tone. "IF IT WAS OFFERED, WE'VE HAD IT. WE ARE A VAXXING FAMILY. GIVE THEM ALL THE VACCINES AGAIN IF YOU WANT. I'LL ALSO TAKE ANOTHER ROUND." (I didn't really say those last two lines, but I was thinking them.) In these crazy times I'm sure there is actually a parent who would refuse a meningitis vaccine for their teenager; that parent is not me, so Lucia rolled up her sleeve for her on-schedule shot. 

I saw a beautiful cashmere sweater online this week with "I didn't vote for him" embroidered in silver across the front. But you know what? I don't even want a pronoun referring to him on my person. I digress! 

It was a really chaotic day. Let me walk you through Tuesday morning:

Final preparations for the cleaners' arrival (ie cleaning up the hay mess Nutmeg created overnight); heating up a soup I'd made Monday night for our quarterly office cooking competition; getting the kids to their doctor's appointment and then to school; having Andrew put the soup into containers and pack up my crock pot; answering texts from the cleaners who didn't know where to park with all the snow and construction vehicles; Andrew navigating the arrival of a whole crew of workers; the doctor's appointment taking longer than expected (see vaccine, above); both of us having 10am meetings scheduled; getting home and jumping in the car so Andrew could drive me to work with the crockpot. It was just--too much. I burnt the soup, by the way, because I forgot about it the second I turned on the burner to heat it up. A ball was inevitably going to be dropped and the office cooking competition was the casualty.