"Wow!"

The view from the one-way bridge over the Duck River 

I had looked forward to Dr. Sosman's reaction when he first saw Woody today.  Just as we had gotten into a patient room, Dr. Sosman walked by.  He stuck his head in the door and said, "Wow!"  Woody said, "Long time no see."  And Dr. Sosman replied, "It has been a long time."  Then he said that he would be back after seeing another patient.

We left home around 8:30am and Woody was checking in at 10:05am.  The lady at the desk who gave him the pager said that it would be about 20 min. and we went and sat in waiting room #1.  Well, 40 minutes later, I suggested that he check with her and see if he had been forgotten.  She said that his appointment wasn't until 11:00am and they would call him in then.  ???????  Then why are you supposed to get there an hour early?  Anyway, Woody decided that perhaps the 11:00am was the hour early for the appointment...I don't think so...but that is about the way things stacked up.  At 11:10am he was called to one of the registration/insurance windows.  Then we were told to go to a different waiting room (so waiting room #2).  We had never been in this waiting room as it was part of the renovation that was taking place when we were there over four years ago. He filled out paper work in this waiting room and sat some more and waited some more.  I'm not sure how many crossword puzzles Woody did during all this waiting time! At 11:40 he was paged again and he went back to be weighed.  Then we were taken to the waiting room #3.  Finally at noon they took us back to the patient room.  At 12:10pm the Fellow (and he was a fellow this time) came in and went over Woody's history and asked a lot of questions and we asked questions too.  He told us what path Dr. Sosman was planning to take with Woody.  He talked with us for about a half hour.  Around 2pm Dr. Sosman came in and we went over lots of things with him. We were leaving the building at 2:30 and on the road shortly thereafter.  We did stop on the way home for a late lunch.  We got home a little after 4pm.  A typical long day at Vanderbilt!

At the moment Woody is set up to have a whole body PET scan and an MRI of his brain next Tuesday at Vanderbilt.  Dr. Sosman said that the quality of what was sent to them from NIH didn't satisfy their criteria.  I know that they just want their own scans to look at and have to later make comparisons.  Then the following Tuesday (2 weeks from today), he will go in for baseline labwork and see Dr. Sosman's nurse practitioner (Dr. Sosman will be out of town) and she will get Woody set up with the next step in his fight against Stage 4 Melanoma.

For this next step, he will be getting Ipilimumab (market name Yervoy) also just referred to as "ipi."  This is given in infusions as an out patient.  Once again it isn't chemotherapy but immunotherapy.  He will get four infusions with three weeks in between each infusion.  This drug works the way his own cells did with his TIL protocol at NIH.  It is supposed get his immune system fighting the melanoma once again.  I will explain it better at another time when I have absorbed and understand more about it.  I do know that I just looked up the cost...
drum roll...............................................................................................................
$30,000 for each infusion so a total of $120,000 for his four infusions. Gulp! One of the last things that Dr. Sosman said was that they would be getting everything approved with Woody's insurance.  Think that Woody will hit into the catastrophic area of his insurance this year?!?  Thanks goodness for insurance!

Woody walked four miles this morning before we headed out and then walked to and from the prayer room at church this evening.  He has just returned.  We are thankful that we missed all the bad storms that came through our area today.  We hardly had to run the windshield wipers at all.  The good Lord is looking out for us!