Insurance fixes and more tumor markers

Yesterday was a good news day.  I hadn't realized the level of anxiety I was feeling until it was gone, but turns out the sense of relief was pretty darn strong.

First, I got written word from my medical insurance company that they will continue to cover the Ibrance and that their customer service contacted the pharmacy who had initially told me my medical wouldn't cover it and my Ibrance is in the pipe to be delivered for the day I need to restart.  That is really good news!

After calling them several times over the last 4 months and getting different stories each time ("No, it's not covered, talk to your drug insurance company."  "Yes, it's on the covered list but has to come from this one pharmacy."  "Who told you it was covered?  There's no list, who told you that? Well, if you say it's covered it can come from any specialty pharmacy because you don't have the drug benefit."), I sent a request for clarification through their written interface so this response was in writing. That's a whole lot better! 

"Who told you that?" is not what I need to hear when I'm calling the exact same number with the exact same company about the exact same insurance plan when I just happen to talk to a different customer service representative on that particular day.  But at least it's all set now and they did go to bat for me to make sure the pharmacy was completely on the same page, too, and verify that when the pharmacy insurance specialist said she'd worked it out, I wasn't going to get more, "Who told you that?" before my Ibrance arrived.

(And, yeah, I get it, I'm sure lots of customer service people hear all kinds of mixed up information and outright lies from people all the time.  It's just really hard when it's really important and you know you're not the one changing the story!)

Want even more good news?  How about this: my tumor marker numbers came back and they're still stable:

Scans trump tumor markers, but they're still meaningful, and pointing to the same stable-ish things the recent scans showed is a good sign.

Normal person levels are below 40, so at over 100 there's still a ways to go, but not getting worse is a good place to be right now.

Got to love some good news days to enjoy in these last weeks of summer!