Tony Turns 28 and Benlysta

Tony's 28th birthday was kind of a bust.  He took the day off work on Friday and I got up with the girls.  Embry was fine to begin with and then she laid on the couch while I made breakfast and eventually started saying her tummy hurt.  After she had a few bites of food and refused the rest I crushed up half of a left over anti-nausea pill I had and mixed it with sugar and water and gave it to her with a medicine dropper.  Immediately upon swallowing it, she started throwing up.  :/  So we cancelled our plans to go on a date to see 'Wolverine' and by 10 she was acting like her normal self again.  We ended up getting 'The Hobbit' from redbox and I bought kettle corn from the kettle corn food truck and we stayed home.  On Saturday morning I had the MOPS leadership retreat which was from 8-2 and my friend Niki came over with Gabe and took the girls swimming in the pool while Tony and I went out to see 'Wolverine'.  It was pretty good and it was nice to go on a date when we hadn't been on one since my mom broke her shoulder.  I feel bad though because I didn't even get to make Tony a rum cake, which is the one thing he really wants on his birthday because honestly we don't have enough money to buy the supplies for it.

Tony was told about a week ago that IBM is sending his department on a week long furlough with 1/3 the pay either at the end of august or beginning of September.  After paying to fix our termite infestation last month and having to pay for our car registration renewals this month, our savings is running dry and I'm not entirely sure how we're gonna work it out with only 1/3 salary for a week.  I'm sure we'll figure something out as God always provides, but that doesn't mean it's any less stressful in the meantime.

While we're on the topic of money let me say that I got a bit of bad news.  Here's the deal:  I've been trying to convince my rheumatologist to let me try Benlysta since it came out last year.  I've been on lupus forums on facebook where many people say how much it has helped them (mostly with quality of life like more energy and less joint pain etc).  So when I was in there last time I asked him about it once again and he said that he's sure it would help me and he'd put in a request for it.  Also that he was almost 100% sure that my insurance would deny it since it's $35,000/year just for the medication (which wouldn't include the whole administration process).  I got a call from the rheum office saying that the prior authorization through my insurance is still pending, but that my copay for each infusion would be $125.  Each infusion takes about an hour and is administered at a hospital (in my case, TMC) and the first 3 infusions are every 2 weeks and then each infusion after that is every 4 weeks.  Strange, but I really don't have an extra $1750 a year to spare.  And all this is even if the insurance approves it, which is unlikely.  If it gets denied then the rheumatologist will appeal to the drug manufacturer and he said that it goes through that way sometimes.  Anyhow, I thought if it did get approved then maybe I could start up a fundly page or something of the sort to see if I could round up any donations to help pay my portion of the cost.  Then there's always the possibility that it will give me horrible side effects or I'll be allergic to it or it won't make any difference at all, in which case I'd stop taking it all together and just continue on as I am now.