I got put in 2 heparin timeouts, and I had to take a long punishment walk. None of that helped. So a medication has been ordered to help make my infusion happen. You’d think that would be as simple as going to grab the medication, but not in our profit-driven healthcare country. The countdown started at 12pm for insurance authorization to happen in time for me to be able to have my infusion today. It all had to happen by 12:45pm. And, well, two things going against that were 1) this was happening at lunch time and 2) insurance companies. @cleverdevil did his best and called the Blue Shield to try to push things through, but they basically said I needed to be losing a limb for anything to be quicker than an hour. So here I sit, in my infusion chair, waiting. My infusion won’t happen today, but they are doing one push to see if I can get a quick approval for the medication, so that I can have everything cleared out and return tomorrow for my infusion. While that would be awesome, technically the insurance approval could take 24-72hrs. Yes, that is the country we live in, where a profit-driven industry delays chemotherapy infusions because they have to decide if they want to cover a medication necessary for me to actually get the infusion. Coooool….
I did get a good explanation as to what the issue is with my port. It’s basically a tube with build-up in it. When I come for infusions, they always to a primary flush and look for blood return. Despite using all of the tricks in the book, that did not happen today. Tricks included looking left, arms in the air, lay down, cough… I liken that step to rinsing a straw with water. After the first flush, they tried a heparin push. I liken that to soaking the straw in soap and water. They tried that twice with a walk in between to see if that helped get things moving. Nope. So that leaves me waiting on the scrub daddy. Alteplase is the technical name. That is going to go in there and scrub my catheter so we can actually get the push and pull happening in my port.
Something that I appreciate the nurse saying is “Maybe this is your body or the universe saying, ‘Hey, slow your roll. We just went through a lot on Thursday.’ This could just be what needs to happen today.” While mostly the issue is our for-profit healthcare system, I’ll take the perspective that God may use some of those stupid human systems to make us get what we need.
As I write, we got approval for the Alteplase! So, as long as that works, I’ll return tomorrow for my infusion. This now puts me on a Tuesday cycle rather than Mondays, but c’est la vie.
Onward.