Happy 2008!!

Hello All,

I hope everyone has had a very merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year so far! We headed out to AZ after Christmas, as usual, to see Larry's family for the holiday. We had a great time and rang in the New Year with the Wolf's and several of their AZ friends! Even the little one made it to midnight! Uncle Danny was crankin' all kinds of popular tunes on the loud sound system and Joshua and Trinity were impressing the masses with their talented feet. They danced the night away. It was really cute!

Back home again and I was off to see Dr. Rigburg the day after I got home. He is the Chemo doctor. He said my Ct-scan and x-ray I took on Christmas Eve just showed more scarring and stuff from the new surgery. No evidence of new disease growth. I guess it's difficult to track the disease without the growth's. They like to watch them shrink and disappear. Dr. Kerr was the one who recommended the surgery and just get the bad stuff out of there. So now the best way to track things is to just keep taking periodic scans and make sure nothing new shows up. Just like what we had to do before.

Dr. Rigburg would like me to do a PET scan before I get started. We are having a few hang up's because we have not changed from Blue Cross yet. This may not happen for another month. The Doctor recommended that we did not wait that long to get started. Now is the time to treat when the cells are dividing more actively and are more receptive to the chemo drug. The problem is Dr. Rigburg went out of network with Blue Cross the end of October and now all my visits and treatments are at an out of network expense. Three other of my doctors did the same the end of 2007. We are too far into the process to be changing doctors now. We are trying to get the insurance changed, meanwhile the cost of chemo and scans could be substantial. No one would give us exact figures when we were researching this earlier on. I guess it's all the upside and down side of insurance.

So basically we feel it is important to get going on treatment but we are completely in the dark with how much this is going to cost us. So we are going to have to proceed with faith that God will provide and it will all work out. It always does. He is our provider!!

Dr. Rigburg wants to start me on a drug called Hycamtin. It is used to treat relapsed ovarian cancer patients. It has alot of the same side effects as the last chemo I did. Yes, including hair loss. Boo-h00, I just was almost at the point of needing an actual haircut. The treatments would be every Monday for 3 weeks and the 4th Monday off. That would be considered one treatment. He wants to do 4 treatments. So that would be 4 months. Not too much different than the time frame I was on last year at this time. I completed my treatments last April. We will see what happens.

Prayer Requests:
That this will once and for all get the cancer-kill it and it will never come back!
That my blood stays good with WBC's and RBC's-I need healthy counts to stay on course.
That the family stays strong through it all.
That I am able to tolerate the treatments well.
That all the insurance and the expenses work out.

Thanks for all the love and support. It really is priceless!! Thank you Jesus that you are bigger than any of this!

Lots of love, Peggy