Pharmacy Confusion?

Before I get into the main issue of this post, thought I would let everyone know that Amanda is generally doing ok.  Once again having to work at getting her to drink enough liquids, but her nausea seems better controlled - actually is eating - although she has very odd food requests.  Other than some mash potatoes and water, no food until tonight when she requests...Bean Salad!  Then she proceeds to pour enough vinegar on it to kill a normal human being...talk about whacked out taste buds.

Doctor Taparia increased her Ondansetron to 8mg three times a day with her Dexamethasone that she takes twice a day.  She also prescribed  Prochlorperazine as a rescue anti-emetic.   Amanda has some past experience with the IV form of  Prochlorperazine, and is trying desperately to avoid it.  To quote her, it makes her feel weird (basically makes her feel like she is literally crawling out of her skin) - would rather put up with feeling crappy than go though those side-effects.  Her main issue right now is her extreme fatigue.  She has been basically sleeping about 18 hours a day.

Back to the subject at hand...

Got a call from our pharmacy this afternoon that the G-CSF injections are a bit of a problem.  Apparently our insurance will only cover a month (4 injections) at a time, but the manufacture only ships in packages of 10.  No problem, they will store the balance (not happy due to the cost of the drug - about $250.00 per shot), but they were checking other stores for overstock.  I told them that would be fine as we did not need until the 19th.  I get home and started looking at the paperwork, and alarm bells went off.

We were told by our Oncologist's nurse that Amanda would be getting the long-lasting form known as Neulasta (pegfilgrastim) rather than the short acting Neupogen (filgrastim).  This made since to me, as she is only injecting herself on days 8, 12, 22 and 26 (28 days in a chemo cycle with treatments on days 1 and 14).  Based on my digging around other blogs and forums, individuals on Neupogen often are having to give themselves daily injections (bleh).  Problem is, the pre-authorization from our insurance company and the drug info sheet from our pharmacy was for Neupogen.   Quick call to the pharmacy tonight and they are confused as well...the original prescription was for only G-CSF with no further information other than the dosage level did match that for a typical dose available for Neupogen, not Neulasta.  Well, gonna have to wait until Monday to sort this out!

Time to go.  Got a pot of spaghetti on the stove, which Amanda seems to have an interest in...after eating a bowl of pickled beans (lol).  Go figure, but not complaining.  At least she is eating!