back HOME!

We arrived back in San Diego the beginning of this week. Wow! What a relief! The good Lord answered all of our prayers regarding safe travel, and when the plane touched down in San Diego airport we both cried lots of tears of relief! Immediately our environment was close to 40° cooler than Houston and the humidity was well under half what we were experiencing previously. I finally feel like I can put my healing on a fast-track to success. While we were out of town, fighting unbelievable weather conditions I never had that feeling at all. Dorothy was right: "there's no place like home".

Houston was incredibly tough six-week journey that I will never repeat. We are hard at work with our healthcare provider arranging weekly tests that are required by the FDA for me to be in this clinical trial.
While in Houston I have had a catheter port installed in my chest to allow my medicine to be administered... And also to allow blood to be drawn at will by the labs for blood testing. The first surprise we had upon arrival at San Diego was that they were no longer able to draw blood from this port. With it not being used for a few days while we were traveling, it got occluded . This required yet another trip to emergency room. They told us only had to do was use a solution that is very common to get rid of a minor clot that was preventing the blood from flowing out of the catheter. All I can say is this: don't ever believe it when an emergency room says "very quick procedure" or if they use the word "minor" to describe fixing something. If we were still at the clinic in Houston, this would have been a 30 minute procedure but in our local emergency room it took until well after dark. What was required, was injection into the catheter of this product that deletes these small clots.. And then you let it sit for 30 min. before drawing blood. In other words it should take less than an hour, not a full day and part of evening.

On the other hand, I am grateful that Kaiser has worked with us in arranging the constant blood testing that is required by the FDA for this clinical trial. My oncologist has agreed to help me along with whatever is needed to get through this clinical trial at Burzynski clinic. This is a lot of testing- three times per week labs will be drawn. This is why it is so critical in my catheter port be working properly.

If I had to pay out-of-pocket for all this testing locally, it would be a lot different! I would like Kaiser Doctor allowing them to be done within the system, each test will just cost me $10 and I'm very grateful.

It feels so good to be home and sleep in our nice soft bed without a wall air conditioner blowing directly on us and making a lot of noise! We actually had the hotel change our room once because we could not stand the air conditioner in our first room! When it's well over 100° outside, and your room is only about 300 ft., That AC spends a lot of time working hard, but it's too noisy for you to sleep what good is it?
Ahh, the virtues of central air!