As of Tuesday, Maggie was doing much better.  Knock on wood, she seemed to come out of the funk this time a lot quicker and without quite as much discomfort as the last two times.  It could be because Dr. Loukas lowered her dosage of the Oxaliplatin out of concern for the side effects.  Either way, she’s doing fine now.

The side effects so far as still the same: joint pain (especially in her jaw when she chews food for the first bite or two) and cold sensitivity.  Other than that, she’s doing pretty good.  I’m hoping that we may have found the secret recipe to the nausea since it wasn’t as much of an issue as last time.  It’s so hard to say, predictably.

We are very thankful for one fantastic and stunning thing that has happened: our insurance policy has renewed with minimal increase.  Our monthly policy went from $280 to about $340.  Fantastic.  And they added a $2,500 deductible for prescriptions.  Yes, in normal circumstances a $2,500 deductible would be crazy but we’ll hit that in one or two visits to The Spa. Given the last count total of $358,515 total benefit*, we’ll gladly pay that bill.

* “Benefit” as defined by the insurance company means “your benefit from our relationship” including negotiated rate reductions for services.  It *does not* mean amount paid by the insurance company.  The amount actually paid by the insurance company is $184,904.  This is worth repeating for effect.  We were billed $358,515 but the insurance only paid out $184,904.  Even funnier is that they tallied up $228,123 on our “Lifetime Maximum.”  Wow, this is easy to understand.

So, yeah, $60 difference.  That sure beats my guesstimate.  But, as Maggie likes to tell me, I’m pessimistic.  I was pretty convinced that we’d be seeing $1000 insurance payments or that they’d just drop us.  Honestly, I’m very surprised and very pleased at what has happened.  And relieved.  Can’t forget that feeling.