A few weeks ago, my mother, who is 81 years old, was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer. Fortunately, at this early stage, it is entirely curable, and today she had outpatient lumpectomy surgery to remove the tumor. She is home as I write this, resting comfortably and in good spirits. There is no involvement of the lymph nodes so she'll be just fine, and only needs some precautionary radiation treatment post-surgery. I've known so many female friends who've gone through various stages of breast cancer and treatment that it's scary how many folk I know who have been touched by this disease, but I never thought that it would touch my own immediate family, so I have never bothered to get a mammogram, figuring that such things are really only necessary if you have a family history. Well....now that we do, I'm not going to waste any more time and when I see my primary care doctor in a few weeks for a regular check up, I am going to make a point to schedule a mammogram. However, if, God forbid, they find something they don't like, my insurance won't pay for any surgery or treatment, so.....I kind of wonder what the point is of having to go through all of this when I have insurance that, while it will pay for the mammography, will not pay for surgery or treatment. It kind of defeats the entire purpose of doing any kind of preventive care if your insurance won't pay for necessary treatments should things be found that are out of order. I just hope that President Obama (God, how I love the sound of that!) can get Congress to work with him on comprehensive health care reform, and I don't mean nickel and dime stuff, I mean real, true, universal health care with no deductibles or co-pays to bankrupt us. I know that he's in for the fight of his life, but this issue means even more to me since cancer has so recently visited itself on my family (I also have a first cousin, Terry, who is battling recurrent malignant glioma, a nasty brain cancer). I pray that our leaders can see just how important health care reform is to our national financial recovery. The two go hand in hand and I think that President Obama gets it. No one who is diagnosed with cancer should have to worry about how to pay for the treatments. No one who undergoes cancer treatment should have to go into catastrophic debt as a result like my friend Karen, recovering herself from a bout of breast cancer that threw her $10,000 in debt - and that's what insurance did not cover. She said that the total cost of treatment was over $40,000 but she was left with $10,000 in debt as a result of going through surgery, chemo and radiation - after what her insurance paid! That's just so not right, if you want my opinion. She survived her breast cancer, but now she's left with a whopping debt that will cut into her earnings and take years to pay off. No one should have to face that kind of situation, especially when a life threatening illness hits. I just hope that when I have my first mammogram that it comes up clean, because right now, I am in no position to incur any more medical debt than I have already managed to run up, and that will take me a long, long time to pay down. I just can't afford any more medical treatment on anything for the foreseeable future.OH, MY ACHING KNEE!
Two years ago, I had an MRI on my left knee that has been a constant problem for some time now. It showed very clear evidence of osteoarthritis, no huge surprise given the issues I've had with it for so long now. For two years, I've been in and out of physical therapy for a variety of problems, mostly knee related (but I also had rehab on my tennis elbow afflicted right arm, my tendinitis afflicted right Achilles tendon and my left index finger post-surgery to regain range of motion). I just finished yet another round of PT not long ago, but now my knee feels worse than ever. It's possible that it's just the result of not having followed through with the home PT regimen and I know that I really need to get to it and start doing it again. It's tough when you don't have access to the same kind of equipment that they have at PT and have to improvise with what you have around the house. I may buy two things they use in PT - a "ProStretch" device that stretches your hamstrings and Achilles and a StretchOut strap, which allows you to do various stretches that they've assigned me to do as part of my home regimen. You can buy both of these together through Amazon.com for under $50 and it seems worth it to me to own a few pieces of PT equipment that will serve as motivation to do my home care regimen, which I am told I have to do forever, not just temporarily, given the length discrepancy between my two legs (a whopping 1½"). For now, though, the pain and in particular the stiffness are driving me crazy. I've been considering testing glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, which I hear works for painful joints. I bought some topical glucosamine/chondroitin today and plan on testing that for a few weeks to see how that works at relieving my pain and stiffness. It says to use it twice a day and it will take a few weeks to feel any results, but I'm willing to see if the topical stuff works before testing the oral kind. I'm just tired of hurting all the time, as I am nearing my 52nd birthday this spring and am too young to be having to deal with this kind of arthritis pain. It depresses the hell out of me because it slows me down and prevents me from being able to do certain things that I like to do, so I am going to do whatever it takes to stop it in its tracks, because I cannot afford any more medical treatments on it and will have to resort to whatever methods I can come up with on my own to cope with it, at least until we in this country finally have universal health care (something I'm not optimistic will happen anytime soon). Maybe then I can finally have the surgery that I probably need to fix this bum knee once and for all, if that's what it will take to make it better. My doctor doesn't think it needs it right now, but sooner or later, it may just come to the point of needing it. Until then....I'm doing whatever I can to relieve the pain and stiffness on my own.
2 comments:
I think your mom will do just fine. My spouse had a similar prognosis & two years later is AOK. The knee thing is tricky I waited from high school football injury till I was 62 & had had to finally give up tennis, troutfishing, mall shopping (that was easy). I tried glucosomine (no help), expensive sinvisc shots (no help) Both knees hurt badly. Then when I couldn't sleep at night anymore the time had come. I opted to replace the worst knee after the ortho guy said the trauma was ten times worse than twice as bad if I opted to do both. Now five years later the pain is gone in the knee I didn't have replaced, Im walking normally, have resumed all my activities (except tennis) Its been a miracle.
Best wishes to your mother - me beloved Gran was a 28 yar survivor when she died - and death was, quite siply, of old age and very definitely not cancer.
I hear you about treatment and its costs. I wish that President Obama (I agree, it has a great ring) could effect change in this area, but I doubt that it is possible. The profit margin is simply too high. Health insurance costs at my university have risen 8 - 10% each year for several years, with no abatement in sight. Meanwhile, the coverage declines.
I say this in partial jest, but I'm also serious; take away health insurance from Congresspersons. Don't let them have it through spouses or partners. Let them go through what we go through. It will take a while for Congress to suffer enough - after all, they have connections and make a good salary - but give it five to ten years.
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