Blogging about life in Minnesota, raising our six kids with Down syndrome while battling Breast Cancer.

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor in the morning the devil says, "Oh shit! She's up!"

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Phone Calls

Today was about being on the phone, playing tag with various service providers.

First was the genetic counselor. I need to find out my risks for breast cancer, as well as whether or not I have the BRCA 1 and/or 2 genes. These are the genes that cause breast cancer as well as several other types of cancer. While talking with the nurse she mentioned "You will also be going over your stroke risks." Umm yeah. Significant family history of stroke. We'll be meeting on Monday next week.

Next up was Angela's insurance provider. You know, she is 18 now. Things change at 18. Who knew? She has been assigned a TBI/Stroke care case manager who will be coming out for a visit. I don't even know exactly what for. With all the changes that have been made to healthcare there are a lot of services being cut so I hope it is nothing related to that!

And then there was the call to Children's Hospital of Boston. If you're new here, we live in Minnesota but Angela sees a specialist in Boston to manage her Cricopharyngeal Achalasia. This is a very rare disorder and there is nobody local who will treat it so Mayo sent us to Boston. Anyway, Angela needs to be seen again. Because it is out of state, it takes quite awhile to get this all arranged so I'm starting on it now with hopes of having her there in October or so.

I also called Amplatz Children's hospital to get Audrey scheduled for her MRI. Axel has an upcoming check up with his spine surgeon at Shriners in Philadelphia, and we need to get this done to determine if Audrey needs to be seen at the same time. I'm hoping to get this done around the first week of August. If only I could have gotten it scheduled, but it never seems to be that easy. I should hear back from them tomorrow.

Last were my two surgeons. One is the surgeon who did my lumpectomy. I wanted to talk with him about a mastectomy and get all the necessary details so I can make a decision. I'm waiting for them to call me back with an appointment date. The other is the plastic surgeon to discuss options for reconstruction. I have had work done by her before and I really like her. I've also seen pictures of her breast reconstruction work on women who had radical mastectomies done and I like what I see. Especially considering if I decide on mastectomy it won't be a radical procedure, meaning I would have much "cleaner" site to work with as well as more skin.

The afternoon was spent with the kids at therapy and getting some much needed stuff done, but thats another blog post! 

1 comment:

Goneahead said...

FYI - ASAN has just released a toolkit to help youths transition to adulthood and managing healthcare:

http://autisticadvocacy.org/2014/07/asan-unveils-toolkit-for-advocates-on-health-care-and-the-transition-to-adulthood/

might be useful? :)