Cancer, Part VI: Major Update

First off, let me say that I am now down to 200 lbs. That makes 96 lbs lost so far. I feel great! Other than still having few clothes that fit.

In other news, I had a doctor's appointment today with my E, N & T doctor to go over the results of the Contrast CT that I had last Thursday. He examined me, looked over everything from my ears to my throat. Then gave me copies of the reports from the radiologist.

Nothing.

The pictures indicated there were no abnormalities visible that were of concern. Therefore, as Dr. S put it, "no weird surgeries for you!" LOLz!

Mother is taking me out to dinner tonight to celebrate. I go back in three months to see the doctors for the next round of checkups. It is kind of annoying, though, since my insurance changed and now my co-pays are higher. Thankfully, I won't have to go as often now that everything is under control. I expect the phone to start ringing off the hook any second now, since mother is probably spreading the news far and wide.

So, this may be the last of the cancer postings. That is unless someone has a question or wants more details about something that I would be willing to provide.

This, though, won't be my last posting in the blog. I just have to think of more things to write about...

Cancer, Part 3

The aftermath...

Yes, I am done with my treatments and I have gone back to work. I still have a few lingering problems, though. I have no appetite still, and my tongue is very painful. I cannot eat bread or anything heavy like that, lest it become stuck in my throat.

I've been living on macaroni and cheese, and other assorted pasta-and-cream-sauce dishes as these go down the easiest. My mother constantly pesters me to eat more, but I cannot. Though I am eating more than I did during treatments, I am still losing a little bit.

My skin has healed, and the acne is gone. I still have a lot of fatigue, but I am able to put in a full day at work as long as I take it easy. It was not easy to be off for those six weeks, I began to go stir crazy. You can only watch so much daytime television before you become insane.

It was surprising when the bills started coming in. The company I work for has great insurance, thankfully. Lots of people at work bitch and moan about the piddly amount we have to pay on our checks for insurance. Every two weeks, we pay something like $17 for a single. This is not much considering that insurance rates constantly increase. Our company has to pay over $5 million dollars per year for insurance premiums to cover all the employees.

I received the bill for the radiation treatments. Each treatment cost $1,291. The total was $38,400 for the radiation alone. I have yet to receive the bill for the chemotherapy, but Dr. M2 stated that the seven doses I took would cost about $40,000. The total I had to pay for everything, with copays and prescriptions and the like, was about $150.

This was, I think, the most shocking part. I knew that it would be expensive, but my goodness. How can someone without insurance handle this? This shows the state of health care in this country. The doctors have to charge so much because insurance companies only pay a fraction for the services rendered. Doctors have to make a living, too. And don't start about the obvious well-to-do nature of most doctors. They invariably have lots of patients, so they are bound to make good money...and they should.

People say that the answer is to offer socialized medicine like in Canada. That is a good idea, in theory. If you go to Canada and see how things operate, you'll discover that it is not very good in practice. People wanting surgeries now are coming to the US and paying our exorbitant prices.

And don't get me started on Medicaid and Medicare.