Allie's Day

Tomorrow Allison and I are going to be spending the day together tomorrow. Finally we will have our follow up appointment with the cardiologist to check on the status of her heart murmur. Then in the afternoon we go to the pediatrician's office to get caught up on a vaccination. Fun times! In between appointments we have about 2 hours, so I will be looking for things to do with my little sweetie!

Of course I have to keep mind the car sickness issue. She is sure to get sick on the way to the cardiologist as she will be wide awake at 9:15. Mostly likely she will get sick on the way from the cardiologist to the pediatrician as well, but hopefully on the way home she will sleep! So I'm packing 3 changes of clothes and praying for the best!

Another Manic Monday

I was quickly zapped back into the "cancer world" today. I had my list of phone calls to make, but was going to wait until naptime so that I could hear the person on the other end of the phone (ever try talking on the phone with 3 two year olds and an infant in the background?) The calls started coming in by about 10:30. To start the day I found out that we need to continue to get authorization for each appointment we have at Sloan. We already got authorized for one office visit with the surgeon, but now we needed to get it for the neurosurgeon who is going the spinal part of the surgery as well as the oncologist who will meet with us. I had to call Strong so that our oncologist could fill out the form and fax it to the insurance company, who can then send a letter of approval to Sloan. Then I got a call from my wonderful case manager (thanks for staying on top of things Priscilla!) who told me that Dr. LaQuaglia doesn't participate in my insurance...I held back the tears and just thought to myself "nothing is stopping us at this point!!!" I found out that we need to have a letter sent to the insurance company explaining why we have to seek treatment at Sloan rather than doing treatment locally. This isn't exactly true though, I'm sure there are plenty of surgeons who would do the surgery in Buffalo or Rochester. HOWEVER, we want the best. When you go to buy a computer, or a car, you research different brands, and decide which one is the "best" one you can afford and you go with that one. Obviously when it comes to allowing someone to operate on our child, we are only going to allow the best possible surgeon to do so. Through much research it became clear that Dr. LaQuaglia is the best. So I called his office to see if he could write a letter to the insurance company justifying why HE needed to do the surgery. Apparently they have dealt with this type of thing before, so we are praying that we will get approval. If not, at least we will have a week to appeal.

Other news of the day is that we secured a room at the Ronald in NYC. We have a room reserved for a month and can extend our stay if we need to (or shorten it!) I also called JetBlue and registered Brady as a "lap child" for our flights. Can you believe that he is free on the way down because he is under 2, but his birthday is April 24, so we will have to buy him a ticket home!!! Ha!

Allie's appointment is tomorrow morning at 9am at the Strong Pediatric Cardiologist. I'm praying for an "in and out" type appointment. If anything is wrong I plan on checking myself into the mental health ward:)

I've always loved the month of April. Matt and I got engaged in April and I knew we should get married in April too, so we did! 3 years later we had our precious triplets in April. Now this major surgery and life-changing trip will happen in this month. I'm praying that God continues to pour out his blessings in this month of my life.