Health Update:
Two weeks ago Liz was admitted into the hospital.
Wednesday April 5th, she was at a doctor’s appointment at UCI and Liz mentioned to her doctor that she was having some abdominal pain that rated at about a 3 on a scale of 1-10. The doctor dismissed the pain with the same dismissal she’s had a few times now, essentially chalking it up to the fact that she has cancer and will have pain.
Over the course of the next few days, the pain level went up slowly and she began having major difficulties eating. On Sunday April 9th, she spiked a fever and the pain got a lot worse. They spent the next 24 hours in the emergency room trying to locate the infection and bring her fever down. At the end of her hospital stay, April 12th, they concluded that they believe the infection was located in her biliary tract and sent her home with a prescription for a 2 week IV infusion of antibiotics.
The two weeks is almost over but the pain is still present and, while her ability to eat has improved, she is still having a hard time keeping much food down. She should have started chemo back up again on the 12th but because of this infection it has been delayed until further notice.
She’ll have another appointment with the doctors at UCI this week and hopefully we’ll know more about what is going on and when she’ll be able to start chemo again.
On a positive note, they did a CT scan on her in the emergency room and noted that the cancer appears to be stable. So her not being able to have treatment for a month hasn’t affected her too much as far as the doctors can tell.
A Note regarding Doctors and such: Thanks to the help of your donations, Liz was able to pay for her old benefits through COBRA for two months, which will cover the treatments she received at City of Hope after she was fired. After that, Noel’s insurance will be able to cover her treatments at UCI. Her oncologist at UCI has a close working relationship with her previous oncologist at the City of Hope, so they are working together to continue the plans to get Liz approved to receive immunotherapy.
Lawyers: Liz reached out to an Employment Law Attorney for a consultation, through a recommendation of friend. This attorney advised Liz that she absolutely has a case but the sad truth of the matter is that her previous employer (Brother International) could just “wait her out.” They had a good conversation that presented the question of whether she wants to spend whatever time she has left battling this in court or drop it and just enjoy life. Liz chose to let it go.
Now this doesn’t mean that we all couldn’t throw tweets and letters at Brother International or alert the media and see if they'll shame Brother International into a settlement or something, but for Liz’s part she’s just going to focus on her health right now and we all believe that is for the best.
That’s what is going on. Please continue to send her your love, your smiles and support. It means so much to her.
