Today is Blondie's 12th birthday - my 3rd child! They are growing up too quickly!

Everything went fine with my appointment today. My scans looked good once again. Today is the surgery date for my neighbor - hoping for the best for her.

I had another scan today. Things were uneventful with the scan once again.

My CA-125 number was at 12 this week. I am not worried about it bouncing around like this though. I asked my doctor about it one time and she said that the bouncing around is fine - it is if the number started doubling each time that she would start to get concerned.

The other day my husband and I were talking about how we felt strongly for some reason to move to the house that we are in and we were wondering what that reason was. Then a day or two later we were at church and I was up on the stand because I was playing the organ for Sacrament Meeting when the bishop went up to the pulpit and announced that a neighbor of ours that had just had a baby had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. My husband and I just looked at each other and I had an overwhelming feeling come over me that this is one of the reasons that we are in this house at this time - so that I can help be there to support our neighbor and her family. After church DH and I went to the hospital to visit with her and I had written her a letter beforehand about some of my experiences and feelings at the time. I also gave her my contact info and the link to this blog and told her to feel free to call me anytime for help or with questions.

Today at my appointment I talked with my doctor and nurse practitioner about my neighbor and they gave me some contact info so she can try to get in to the doctors at Huntsman. Other than that my appointment went fine. It is nice having the older kids out of school now so I don't have to find someone to watch MJ for me.

My CA-125 number this week is 11!

Had my 4 week appointment today. Everything looked fine with my CT scans. I am one of only a couple of patients still on the study that I am on. My doctor is hoping that pretty soon here they will let me space my scans further apart. Since my last appointment I have started trying to cut down more and more on the anti-nausea drug that I am taking. Right now I am down to taking a quarter of a pill before I take the veliparib.

Routine CT scan today. Nothing out of the normal to report.

The office called me yesterday and said that the machine for testing the CA-125 number was down for some maintenance so I would have to wait another day for the results from the test.  I checked online today and my number has risen slightly to 12 (from 10 the last couple of times).  Hopefully that is nothing to worry about yet.  Hopefully it will not continue to go up like happened a little over a year ago now...

Had my 4 week appt today again. I had to wait a long time for them to even call me back for my lab work today. After waiting for about 20 minutes I went and asked at the receptionist desk and they said that they were just really busy and would get me back as soon as they could.  I ended up finally getting called back for the labs and by the time I saw the doctor it was about an hour past my appointment time.  (Usually they are pretty close to schedule and I am usually called back for my labs within 5 minutes of checking in at the front desk.)

I met with another resident fellow today. I'm never sure what to say to them because I really don't have any symptoms to complain about and not much to really discuss with them.  After that the doctor came in and I let her know that my surgeon is moving.  We think it would just be easier to transfer my care up to Huntsman so we are not having to send results back and forth between the two offices.

I also asked the doctor if I could ever be considered in remission. I have people ask me all the time and I am never really sure what to say to them.  She said that yes I can tell people that I am in remission - since I have no evidence of disease and my CA-125 number is within normal levels.  She said that I am just receiving maintenance therapy for the cancer - we are not actively treating any cancer.  So "YEA" I am in remission!!

I had a mammogram today.  It went pretty quickly and then the technician said that the doctor was going to look at the scans while I was waiting in case there was something of concern on the scan that they wanted to take another look at.  So after waiting for a few minutes back in the waiting room, the technician came out and said that things looked good and that I could go home.  That was kind of nice - better than the last time when I had to come back a couple of days later to do some rescans.

I had my 6 month appt with my surgeon today.  She said that she is moving at the end of June so this will probably be my last time seeing her.  Her husband got a new job in Michigan so she is transferring to a practice out of the University of Toledo.  She said that I can either transfer my care to one of her partners in the office or just transfer to one of the doctors at Huntsman.  Other than that everything went fine for my appt.

My CA-125 number is still at 10 this time around.

Went in for my 4 week appt today.  I asked the doctor about the labs that they wanted to draw on Monday and they were a little confused by it too.  Apparently I could have had them draw my labs on Monday but they have to do the study labs right before my appointment so it doesn't really matter either way.  I just couldn't remember if I was allowed to take my study drug on the morning of the regular labs so I didn't want to risk it on Monday.  I am not supposed to take the study drug before the labs for the study are drawn, but apparently it is fine for the other labs.

We also discussed my bone scan briefly and they said that my bone density levels are pretty close to what they were with my last scan and that my vitamin D levels look good so just keep taking the vitamin D supplements.

CT scan today. Things went fine for it.  When I went to get my port accessed, the nurse said that I had lab work for her to draw and I was a little confused because we usually just do it right before my appointment at Huntsman since they have to draw special tubes for the study anyway.  So I told the nurse not to draw them. Other than that, everything went as usual.

The bone density machine finally worked today! The scan went pretty quickly and then I was out of there and back home again.

I had my bone density scan scheduled for this morning.  When I showed up the technician came out and said that she hadn't used the scanner since that last time when it had broken down and when she showed up this morning there was a note on her desk saying that everything was working.  Well, she tried to turn the machine on and it wouldn't even turn on this morning.  So we had to reschedule again! And they gave me another $6 gift card to the eatery again.  Luckily this time I hadn't traveled very far to get there.  So I will cross my fingers that everything will work next week...

I also go my CA-125 test results back and it is at 10 again.

I just had my routine 4 week visit today.  Everything looks fine with my labs.  Since my kids are off-track from school, I dropped them off at my parents' house on my way into the clinic.

I did notice that my last CT scan was not paid for by the study like it was supposed to be.  I let the study coordinator know and she is looking into it.

I had an appointment for a bone density scan right before noon today.  I took MJ over to my parents' house and helped them pack up their kitchen for their cabinets to be redone and then I drove over for my appointment.  After sitting around for a little while I overheard someone talking to some ladies and it sounded like there was some machine broken and they were having to reschedule appointments.  I asked the technician about it and she said that it was the dexascan machine - which is what I was there for.  Apparently it quit working during someone's scan and after rebooting the machine it still wasn't working so they were having to reschedule all of the appointments for that day.  They usually only have appointments one day a week but the following week they were not going to be having any appointments.  I now have to wait until the day after my next doctor's appointment to get my bone density scan done.  They did give me a $6 gift card to use at one of their eateries though...  I think I will save it until I go downtown next time since it will be over lunch time.

My CA-125 number went up one digit to 10 but nothing to cause alarm.  The nurse called me to let me know that my vitamin D level is slightly below where they would like to see it so they want me to take more vitamin D supplements and calcium as well.

I took MJ over to my parents' house while I went in to the Huntsman clinic for my dr's appt.  Everything was clear with my CT scan and lab work.  I asked the doctor if she thinks it is worth it for me to stay on the veliparib drug and she said she definitely thinks it is helping to keep the cancer away - but I can take myself off of the study at any time if I want to.  They are hoping that the drug manufacturers at some point will let us scale back on the CT scans and allow us to space that out more. I asked about the parp inhibitor drug that was just approved by the FDA for cancer treatments and the doctor said that I would not qualify for it (or my insurance company would reject the treatments) because they require that you have to have tried the standard chemotherapy options 3 times before they will pay for the drug.  Also she said that the other drug has to be taken something like 8 times a day.  She thinks that the drug that I am on is a much better version of parp inhibitor.

They tested my vitamin B12 level and it was actually slightly above the normal range - so that is not what is causing my red blood cells to be abnormally shaped.  They think it is just the drug that I am on - although they have not seen that side effect in everyone that is on it.