<p>LTS: Prayers for you today from the Rosary ladies and me! </p>
<p>Never listen to those nay-sayers. They don’t know YOU!</p>
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<p>[Domenico</a> Wines Selected as Partner by Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation](<a href=“http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080603005162&newsLang=en]Domenico”>http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080603005162&newsLang=en)</p>
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<p>When an image-conscious business like a California winery chooses to associate itself with this cause, that seems to signal something positive.</p>
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<p>–Marcus Aurelius</p>
<p>Sending good thoughts and wishes for a fabulous week, LTS.</p>
<p>and another</p>
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<p>[Cancer</a> survivor counts each day as a blessing - Syracuse.com](<a href=“http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1212569914301410.xml&coll=1]Cancer”>http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1212569914301410.xml&coll=1)</p>
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<p>[Atkinson</a> in the news again | myMeso.org | Mesothelioma Blog](<a href=“http://www.mymeso.org/2008/06/04/atkinson-in-the-news-again/]Atkinson”>http://www.mymeso.org/2008/06/04/atkinson-in-the-news-again/)</p>
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<p>[Giving</a> it his best shot: Atkinson undaunted by cancer, course | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press](<a href=“http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080604/SPORTS15/806040353/1217/SPORTS]Giving”>http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080604/SPORTS15/806040353/1217/SPORTS)</p>
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<p>–Bob Beamon </p>
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<p>–Wikipedia</p>
<p>and another</p>
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<p>[wcbstv.com</a> - Cancer Survivors Cope With Long-Term Issues](<a href=“http://wcbstv.com/seenon/Cancer.Survivors.Cope.2.740245.html]wcbstv.com”>http://wcbstv.com/seenon/Cancer.Survivors.Cope.2.740245.html)</p>
<p>Thank you again to everyone for their support, and these last few posts are especially interesting, and they resonate with me. </p>
<p>I have spent the last few days in some degree of discomfort - bottom line, the doctors think the antibiotic has irritated me, so, I’m off of it, but, yesterday I threw up four times, something I have never done in my life. It was particularly miserable if you can imagine that I had senior executives from a major transnational corporation, security specialists, in my office for a meeting; we had an awesome discussion, but no sooner had I walked them to the elevator when the meeting ended than I had to rush to the ladies room to lose it again. If they had stayed five more minutes it would have been horrible. I am very, very grateful that the meeting concluded when it did. I am also grateful that when they asked about intelligence on sexual predators I was able to tell them that it was outside of my area of subject matter expertise - that would have made me lose it completely, on the spot. Quite literally I would not be able to stomach such diaglog, even if perfectly healthy. </p>
<p>Today I feel much better, and, four hours into being awake and so far everything has stayed in place! I will also see my doctor this afternoon, just to be sure it’s just an antibiotic reaction.</p>
<p>Speaking of my primary oncologist, he was at ASCO so we had our weekly appointment on Tuesday. We had some discussion about the drugs in the pipeline specific to my cancer, and that got us on the subject of the trial system the FDA, etc. </p>
<p>I was his last appointment of the day, which must be why we then spent the next hour talking about politics and the upcoming election. It turns out that we have both voted Republican all of our lives, and, this election, unless he self-destructs or something strange happens, we will almost certainly both vote for Obama. </p>
<p>During that hour, my doctor told me things about his practice that made the horror stories that cross my desk seem like benign mishaps by comparison. He has patients who may be in the MIDDLE of their chemotherapy regimes, and the insurance company, for no reason, will suddenly decide to stop paying the claim, typically because some desk ornament or pencil pusher who is not even a doctor or a nurse decided the treatment isn’t medically necessary, or for whatever reason…in several situations, his patients have had to do without their chemotherapy for a time until the situation gets resolved. Of course, during this period of time, the cancer just grows and grows. </p>
<p>My doctor explained he used to just front and then ultimately in some cases eat the cost of this, but, he can no longer afford to - with one chemotherapy treatment costing well over $10,000, it’s impossible. He further said that while many of the drugs in the pipeline discussed at ASCO are very, very promising, the majority of patients will not even be able to afford the co-pays, so, how are patients going to benefit, unless something changes? </p>
<p>He also spends an extraordinary amount of time arguing with insurance companies, etc., about getting treatments approved; he pays full time research staff to keep the studies and supporting documents close at hand so that he at least has something to fight with. </p>
<p>Last, a segment of his patient population cannot even afford their co-pays to see him - and this manifests in a number of bounced checks back to his office, etc. </p>
<p>I was horrified, imagining if cancer patients cannot afford to pay their oncologist’s co-pays, how are they going to be able to afford to buy quality food, to help nurish their bodies to fight their diseases? How to reimburse caregivers for gasoline and other expenses? How to afford the co-pays on medicines? </p>
<p>I stopped myself just in time before I offered to pay for any patient of his who could not make their co-pays (I have a personal policy about making impulsive financial commitments based on emotion), but, as a collective society, “we” have to do something about this. </p>
<p>I had no idea the situation was this bad…I knew it was bad, but not to this extent…</p>
<p>LTS, thank you for keeping your army of CC supporters updated. I’m knocking on wood that the bad effects of that antibiotic will go away, and I do hope that was the culprit. Antibiotics are notorious for wreaking havoc in one’s digestive system. My H had a somewhat similar experience with an antibiotc that did not agree with H’s schedule of very important meetings.
I was very impressed that your doctor attended ASCO, which means he stays on top of all developments in the oncology world. And there were quite a few posters/presentations on LC at this year’s meeting. I’m keeping fingers crossed and hoping to see even more research in that area.</p>
<p>Oh man. Here’s hoping it’s the antibiotics… The sickest I’ve been in recent memory was a week before my wedding, when I had a sinus infection that I just couldn’t kick. My first day big-gun double-dosage-doozy of Zithromax unfortunately coincided with the monstrously large pink antibiotic antimalarial pills I had to start taking for our upcoming honeymoon to Costa Rica. As soon as I swallowed all the antibiotic pills I was told to take, I remembered: hey, <em>I’m</em> biotic…</p>
<p>Those things pack a punch and mess up your tummy, big-time.</p>
<p>Putting all the pieces together- you have a nasty disease, continue to work a major league job and find time in your brain to consider the financial misfortunes of others with cancer? Is your middle name Theresa? Maybe not- I saw some worldly shoes in a post recently. Make sure someone makes a hard copy transcript of this thread (hint administrators), it is a fascinating, amazing “slice of life” worth reading years from now. And continued good luck. You definitely have a full life.</p>
<p>Wis, thank you for that but I do not really deserve any compliment on the matter - the reality is my work is a large component of what is keeping me alive, in my opinion. Arlen Spector has it right - keeping working, then you have little time to think about the cancer, and, you’re happier. I am obsessed with what I do; at midnight last night, I was answering email to Thailand on my blackberry, and earier this morning to UK. Having a very strong commitment to others, a passion for one’s work, and and being engaged in the world is critical. It’s easier to give in to the nausea and give it control when the executives are on the elevator and on their way to their next item of business; much easier to fight it off when they’re sitting in your office, conversing with across the desk. As I have posted before I do not understand how people can survive this if their world consists of staying home and watching soap operas, or whatever it is people do if they are ill and do not have work. </p>
<p>It’s easier, too, in a rather pathetic, parasitic way, to mentally dominate a serious illness if you can look at the lives and experiences of people who have it just a little bit worse. But still, I am appalled by what I heard Tuesday; I am shocked; just eight-ish months ago I really just sort of floating on this cloud of belief that if one got sick, one went to a doctor, got diagnosed, got medicine, the insurance company paid the bills, one got done with it all and moved on. Insurance paid what it was supposed to pay; very nice people working in cubicles took care of all that. </p>
<p>If people cannot easily pay their co-pays, then, chances are they don’t have adequate food, transportation or caregiving either, and for sick people to be so pathetically lacking is completely unacceptable to me.</p>
<p>I am very, very lucky; I have resources enough to fight this; I have people standing behind me saying “if you should run out of resources come see me”; last night, I had a caregiver at my bedside literally hand feeding me crackers between sips of ginger ale; later I had another offer to help me to the bathroom; this morning another to take me to get my shots; even now, a caregiver just fed me organic chicken broth (nasty stuff by the way, if you’re a patient and reading this, if someone offers you this stuff tell them when hell freezes over you’ll try organic chicken broth -it’s really yucky). My point being that from this relatively comfortable perch it is probably rather easy to think of others. </p>
<p>But that doesn’t mitigate the message, which is that it is so terribly wrong, so horribly unacceptable that we allow very sick people to be put through these sorts of things, and, we simply must find a way to make serious, lasting changes. It’s especially horrible when you consider that for those who lose the cancer battle, this is how their very last days will be spent - caught in insurance battles, panicked about their treatments, and perhaps not even enough nutrition, or even enough people to care about them and for them. How wrong, how heartbreaking. This just simply cannot be, and, it really, really needs to stop.</p>
<p>BunsenBurner, he told me he hasn’t missed an ASCO meeting in 22 years. Interesting comment from his partner today; I went for the CBC for tomorrow’s chemo, and, we happened to be talking about politics again (how does this happen), and I asked him if he didn’t think the press coverage re Kennedy was overly funerial (sp??) and negative - he said, actually, for a stage 4 glioma, no, that’s a hard thing to cure. (I happen to know quite a bit about gliomas, thanks to one of Epistrophy’s posts from MONTHS ago; I purchased the book - does anyone here have the name of the author, who is also a UCSD professor??? - my copy is in Miami - anyway, I became obssessed with that and subsequently drilled deeply into gliomas) - </p>
<p>Anyway, I said, wow, I thought the prognosis for gliomas, even stage 4, was a little brighter; he actually said, given a choice? he’d far rather be fighting small cell…so, once again, there I was feeling parasitically more fortunate…</p>
<p>John Atkinson’s story (re: upcoming golf match) is about to be covered on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.</p>
<p>^^^ thanks for that info momof3—click on fighting cancer link
[MSNBC</a> - Front Page](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#249****6]MSNBC”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#249****6)</p>
<p>LTS, It does seem very likely that the antibiotic was the source of your nausea, but I’m glad you’re getting it checked out. </p>
<p>Yes, something does have to be done about the health insurance situation, which is the largest part of the problem that you somehow find the energy to worry about during your own crisis. It seems to me that the inefficiencies that result from the conditions the bean-counters at the insurance companies impose (doctors and their staffs spending large amounts of time dealing with insurance companies; patient care being compromised when treatment is interrupted for financial reasons, etc.) must be increasing health-care costs while reducing the quality of care. I have an example from my own experience that I think illustrates this point.</p>
<p>About a year ago my husband needed a double hernia operation. He was told to have someone there to pick him up at a certain time; this was stressed, and he was told that the surgery would not take place unless someone was there who would accompany him home. He was told what time he would leave the recovery room - 60 minutes after the end of a 90-minute surgery. I was there, of course, in the waiting room until he was sitting up, when I could be with him. At the appointed time he was told to get dressed and leave. My husband would have preferred to sit there for a while longer - he had just had general anesthesia, for God’s sake, and he is in his mid-60’s, bu this was not allowed. He stood up, started to walk across the room, and blacked out. At this point, he became an emergency. He was put in a bed in a higher-level room and monitored for several hours. Specialists came in, including a neurologist, and all did their exams. A nurse sat by his bed the whole time, watching his vital signs. The diagnosis: he just wasn’t ready to get up. </p>
<p>It was very clear during all of this that the recovery room nurses hated the whole situation. They knew that many patients needed to rest a bit longer, and they hated having to shove people out the door. Once my husband passed out, there was a new diagnosis, and the insurance company had to pay for all those consultations and the time at the higher level of care. </p>
<p>He told his surgeon what had happened at his followup visit, and the surgeon confirmed that the insurance companies mandate the length of time that a patient may spend at each stage in the recovery room. There is no allowance for medical judgment. What happened to my husband happens with some regularity. This is the reason that they insist that someone accompany the patient out of the recovery room; they know that many people are not really ready to leave.</p>
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<p>–Chuck Norris</p>
<p>NYMomof2–that’s appalling. And hard to understand, when I remember not being allowed to walk out of the hospital under my own steam a day after normal childbirth. They insisted on a wheelchair–that’s standard practice in my hospital. So 60 minutes after an abdominal area operation that includes general anesthesia you’re supposed to be able to get up and walk? 
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<p>NYMomof2…your story sums it up very well. Our cultural values for quality of patient care should be stronger than the efficiency factors that now dominate decision making. I recall my own father at Mayo after five bypasses… I knew he should not be dismissed for another day or two but he stood up in front of the doctor and took some steps with his walker, not bending over like everyone else but with with that parade ground quality ramrod military bearing he has and I knew he was going home. His great posture was his undoing. He looks marvelous standing up! Better than most of the population even at age 80-plus. He went into atrial fib in the car on the way home and we had to drive to a lesser hospital in an emergency stop and new admission for a few days…of course.
One the other hand, LTS has had decent human beings at her side this week, no floods and no one telling her they didn’t have “time” to put down her foot rests on the w/c…so in this we are blessed this treatment round week. It is interesting to begin to see the battleground the oncologist has to fight with the insurance monolith…so thank you LTS for making us keep our eyes wide open on this very personal immoral front…where people who want to beat cancer are missing chemo rounds due to bureaucrat posturing, bankrupt ethics and squabbles. Your conversation with your doctor expands the respect we should feel for those who stay on as advocates and true patient care givers.</p>