cancer – day 448
Well my cardiologist is thrilled, that’s the good news from the doctor appointment this week. Man, it still seems like I go to the doctor constantly, every month it’s someone for some checkup or another. Sigh.
But, anyway, my cardiologist is happy because I didn’t have to get adriamyacin chemo, which damages the heart, my heart medicine seems to be working well, my blood pressure is awesome, and the echocardiogram (which he had done before chemo, during treatment, and again a couple months ago after treatment was over) showed that my heart is doing awesome. He thinks it’s unlikely I’ll ever have to get a pacemaker. 🙂 Of course, I can’t remember all the medical terms he used, but to put it in terms I understand from supply chain management, my heart’s throughput is fabulous. A good heart moves blood out of the heart at a rate of 55 (55 whats I don’t know), and my heart is putting through 65, which he was just thrilled about.
What wasn’t so thrilling was that my co-pay went from $20 to $60. I almost canceled the appointment standing there finding out how much my insurance was cut when Chain went to a new plan this year. $60? For ten minutes? Uff da! Granted, he’s an amazing specialist, there aren’t a whole lot of cardiologists that specialize in this neurocardiogenic heart condition I have, but wow, was I bummed about that big co-pay. I was standing there thinking “so much for buying groceries.” Which is a ridiculous exaggeration, I can of course still afford my groceries and the road-tripping I do to go to dance workshops and conventions, but that was the clear and honest thought I had when they told me my copay had tripled.
My cardiologist remembered that I’m a dance teacher. When he mentioned it I said I used to be a dance teacher but that the neuropathy has made it so painful to be on a dance floor for long that I don’t know if I’ll be able to teach dance again. But here’s the ironic thing . . . just this afternoon a guy from Georgetown called me. I’d met him at that music thing at my neighbor’s house a month or two ago, and he has a yoga studio at the edge of town. It had come up at the music party that I was a dance teacher, and he called me to ask if I would teach some dance classes at the yoga studio. I thought he was just being polite, but today out of the blue he called, and I met him at his studio tonight on my way back from Sac. The space is fabulous, pretty amazing for tiny little Georgetown, really. And my gosh, the enthusiasm! They want everything. Argentine Tango, waltz, foxtrot, swing, salsa, cha cha, rumba, night club, just everything.
We’re going to start with a month of Argentine Tango. So, in October after all my travel settles down, I’m going to try to brave the neuropathy to teach again, just once a week to start. But the really nice thing, besides feeling like I’m contributing to my community by teaching in Georgetown, is that I don’t have to drive two hours each way to get there. Between that and the neuropathy, I have had zero success motivating myself to get down to Sac to try to dance, and the thought of all that driving to just teach and ruin my feet and cause myself a lot of pain, well, I haven’t been willing to do it and I haven’t made an ounce of effort to get back to teaching my old classes at Spotlight. But Georgetown is just twenty minutes down the hill; it’s the closest actual town that exists anywhere near where I live.
Oh and here’s the funny . . . people in Georgetown talk about Volcanoville like it’s the high mountains of Colorado, from how they talk you’d think I lived two hours from Georgetown rather than a little less than ten miles. When I tell people in Georgetown that I live in Volcanoville, they always seem really shocked, like they could never live that far from town. Too funny.