7/15/2017 Update

Julie had her first treatment of Chemotherapy Friday morning as scheduled.  Her body has responded well to it so far -- we have no way of knowing yet how the cancer itself is responding yet.  She has not experienced any major side effects yet,  but Sunday is supposed to be the worse day.  As of right now she is scheduled to have the treatment every Friday for 2 to 3 months followed by a likely surgery to remove the tumors from the pelvic area.  Once we get the results of the PET scan that will be done on Tuesday, July 18th, there is a possibility of adjusting the drugs and schedule, but for now it will be a weekly treatment.  The doctor is giving a lower dose every week instead of a higher dose every 3 weeks.  She is not expected to experience the worse side effects until around the 3rd week as many of the side effects are cumulative in their effects.

The doctor's office also called yesterday to let us know that they have decided to postpone the genetic sequencing blood test until after our insurance becomes effective on August 1st because the cost of that one test was around $4,000.  He said waiting a few weeks on that would not matter because it was more important for decisions in the treatment of the tumors that are not in the pelvic area -- right now he is focusing on the ovarian cancer as that is apparently the primary.  Our doctor is being great about helping us manage costs when a slight delay in something has no impact on treatment, but he is also working with us to be aggressive on the things where time is critical.

Praise -- we also go the J-P Drain removed today.  Our family doctor in Honduras talked with the surgeon in Honduras and told us what we needed to do to get it out.

We are overwhelmed by the messages and notes of encouragement and prayer as well as the fundraisers and donations that people are doing to help us with the financial side of this.  We have received verbal estimates of most of the procedures that we have had or will have before insurance becomes effective, but will share the details once we getting more firm written numbers.  Because so many people have and continue to give sacrificially to help meet these financial needs we want to be completely transparent in how the money is being (or will be) spent.  Based on the information we have now, we believe the total that we will be responsible for will be somewhere in the $50,000 range.

Ben