Monday, April 25, 2011

Liquid gold

Our new nickname for my new treatment, Ipilimumab or Yervoy, is called "Liquid Gold". Why, you might ask??? Because the bloody drug costs a whopping $30,000 per infusion! That's $120,000 for 4 treatments! Don't make me start on pharmaceutical companies and the cost of healthcare...

I started the new treatment on April 20th. So far, so good, as to be expected. I guess most patients don't get side effects until after the second round (which will be in 2 weeks). I feel good right now and optmistic going into this, my third treatment in a year. I hope that it is just what I need to knock that last little tumor on it's a*$ for good. For now, I'm focusing on being healthy physically and mentally, and spending time with my family and loved ones. You gotta live life even if it feels like you're in this stall pattern! Plenty of people live with cancer and do just fine, and I know I will too! I just can't wait for the day to go from "patient" rank to "survivor"!

2 comments:

Jules said...

Wow, that is totally liquid gold. BUT so worth it to get rid of that last tumor!! I can't wait for your blog post when you are cancer free!! Hopefully the side effects don't ever kick in for you and this chemo round will be over soon enough! Thinking of you and praying for you all the time! LOVE YA girl!!!

Anonymous said...

Your comment : "Don't make me start on pharmaceutical companies and the cost of healthcare..."

Come on! You are being cured by the $100's of BILLIONS of dollars being spent on research for getting to this point and no wonder health care costs as much as it does. If we did not have the research and the pharmaceutical companies spending investor's up front costs , you would NOT be here today.

Let's hope that our society appreciates the work done by them to help save lives and agrees to promote further research and development rather than the tired complaint about how much new drugs cost. Since you are in the new experimental group of pioneer drugs which have promising results, the new drugs which show success will be widely used and bring down costs. The whole point of R&D is to produce life giving/saving results!! Making $$ in the fruits of their labor is payback for the $100's of millions spent developing your life saving chance to survive. Don't get me started. I am sure you would agree that is worth it....