Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The War

When you aren't sure how something works, you tend to throw everything you've got at it. Especially when it's trying to kill you.

That's the current rather barbaric state of cancer treatment. Throw chemicals into the bloodstream that are designed to kill EVERY fast growing cell because the cancer cells are fast growing and they should die off along with other fast growing cells like hair, blood platelets, etc, etc. One of the chemicals used is called "Red Devil" and the title isn't meant to convey affection.

So this is what my wife is dealing with. So this is why my blog just sits here for months at a time and that trend is bound to continue. I just thought I'd share the reason for the current lack of updates.

People who have Metastisis (sp?) have so much cancer that it can't be killed faster than it re-grows. Fortunately we aren't in that situation but this is still a serious situation. We went to the pharmacy to pick up the anti-nausea drugs and the pharmacist, obviously a newbie, informed us the claim had been denied by the insurance. Let's see. Fresh chemo in your veins. Seven pm on a friday evening and we are being asked to call a doctor that closed 2 hours ago and ask him to fax something to an 800 number that is only manned monday through friday so we can have the medicine to avoid devastating nausea. The bean counter that dreamed up this pre-authorization fiasco and sprung it on us on a friday evening when everything was closed will certainly rot in hell.

I am thankful that Robin on GMA came on and removed her wig. My wife and I watched that episode with great relief because of our aprehension over the hair loss thing. The episode came on after the first chemo visit and the nurse told us in no uncertain terms we needed to go "wig shopping" because by the time we came back for the next treatment the hair would be gone.

While I'm thankful we have technology to fight cancer, I wish we understood it well enough that it would become possible to fight cancer without losing your hair. I also wish the insurance industry would fall into an active volcano.

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