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How do I say this???? Let me explain.... The man I hoped to marry (was 60yrs old at the time, and still an ACTIVE employee with FANTASTIC insurance)
He got diagnosed with skin cancer, Melanoma. Melanoma is the most fatal of the skin cancers. Melanoma is notorious for hitting the heart and lungs. The scans SHOWED a tumor of his lung and 3 tumors near his heart. Long story short..... when they removed his lung.... that tumor did NOT test positive for Melanoma. NOPE! He actually had Lung Cancer. However... the 3 tumors next to his heart... WERE MELANOMA! He actually had 2 different forms of cancer.
Remember when I just mentioned he had FANTASTIC INSURANCE? guess what happened next in one of those 'cancer clinic' specialty places I now detest!
They gave him false hope after false hope, just so he would agree to all the surgeries, chemo, radiation, etc. They treated him like a 'guinea pig' all because he was a CASH COW!!!!!
He spent the next 1 1/2yrs agreeing to all sorts of stuff that just put him in absolute agony. My personal opinion is.... he was subjected to torture... all in the name of.... HIS INSURANCE BENEFITS!
It will always be a sore subject to me. In case you are wondering... he died anyway. Those Cancer Clinic commercials just make me sick!
Last edited by springazure; 01-26-2015 at 11:03 PM..
My cousin and dad would have benefited from this. Both were in the hospital clearly dying but had to suffer the agonies and humiliation of tests, being poked and prodded and awakened at all hours of the night for more tests which were useless. There was no treatment that was going to save them. My dad was fading from a rare incurable disease and my cousin from terminal Cancer.
They should have been in hospice but neither had arranged for it. With a test like this, it might have spared them the agony of all this.
There should be some criteria that would help the patient and his or her family to make an informed decision as to when to say "enough is enough" when it comes to treatment.
THIS is the big chicken and the egg controversy IMO. The sickest people I know are the ones constantly seeking medical treatment for something. The healthiest are the ones who tell the doctor to keep his fist full of prescriptions and simply work to exercise and eat healthy and let nature handle the rest. The latter includes my 84-year-old father-in-law who is our only surviving parent and still as vibrant and active as he was 10 years ago despite his doctor's insistence he should have been on cholesterol medication decades ago.
No, I have no science to back this up. Only observations and the feeling that too much exposure to doctors can be hazardous to one's health.
Now, there are people who demand interventions all the time and many docs or other types of providers feel pressured to give in to them. But you're taking it a bit far, IMO- people who are healthy don't really need to see the doctor all the time anyway and people who have chronic health conditions (which are exacerbated by lifestyle choices and/or other conditions that spring up because of effects of the condition) do need to see the doctor on a regular basis.
Telling a doctor to keep his medications away from the kid with leukemia will just result in having your child taken away from you because they can be treated with western medicine- "natural herbs" aren't going to do the trick no matter how much these parents want them to...
Sign up for some really good long term care insurance if you want more choices. Otherwise, you could end up very few choices. Not much is sadder than the lack of choices because you can't afford good qualified care at home, can't afford hospice, can't afford anything not funded by whatever regular medical coverage you end up with. Assuming, of course, you end up with any medical coverage.
Our son at age 30 stage four brain tumor,Nov.-April when he passed,my point Ted Kennedy's started at same time,he fought the inevitable and gained I belive six months of life,they tried to portray a good outlook.
Trying to extend life when outcome will not change is a waste of resources.
Now, there are people who demand interventions all the time and many docs or other types of providers feel pressured to give in to them. But you're taking it a bit far, IMO- people who are healthy don't really need to see the doctor all the time anyway and people who have chronic health conditions (which are exacerbated by lifestyle choices and/or other conditions that spring up because of effects of the condition) do need to see the doctor on a regular basis.
Telling a doctor to keep his medications away from the kid with leukemia will just result in having your child taken away from you because they can be treated with western medicine- "natural herbs" aren't going to do the trick no matter how much these parents want them to...
By some estimates, medical mistakes are the third leading cause of death in the USA:
After my mother survived a heart attack in her mid-nineties , she went to an assisted living center where she was a high level resident. Her living will stated she did not want to be resuscitated if she experienced a life threatening situation. The supervisor at the ALC came in every 6 months for her to update the living will. Mother lived for 16 months and this happened twice during that time. Turns out she died in her sleep one evening after the evening meal, so it didn't have to be tested.
It was as if the powers that be did not like her wishes and hoped they would change so she could be resuscitated if need be. This was in 2000. Perhaps attitudes have changed to be more willing to follow a patient's wishes.
This should not surprise anybody. We knew when Obama pushed his Obamacare plan on our nation that there were going to be "death panels". These are just the procedures and if a hospital doesn't make enough old folks die there will be severe penalties for the hospital, the physicians and the administrators. To complete his fundamental changes to our nation they need to get rid of people who actually remember freedom, prosperity and liberty.
My own experience with family members is that doctors often take their "cues" from what the patient/family members ask/don't ask. If you are a person who indicates you want everything done to extend life, in many cases that is what you will get. If, on the other hand, you ask questions indicating that you want to know all the pros/cons of procedures and treatments and if you do some research on your own, doctors will be very forthcoming.
An example was my father when he was diagnosed with cancer. He decided to have surgery, but went into it fully informed of the risks/upsides of it. A side effect of his cancer was hyper-calciumia (the body producing too much calcium which resulted in mental confusion). He got through the surgery fine, and had pretty good quality of life for awhile.
At some point, his calcium levels rose again, and I knew the cancer was back - and that it was inevitably fatal. I travelled up to consult with his doctor, because I didn't want them to subject him to lots of invasive tests (and knew that he wouldn't want that as well). We came to an agreement that he would enter hospice and get no further treatment. His doctor was totally on board with that, as she knew him well and knew that is what he wanted.
I think if I had pushed for them to do whatever possible to extend his life, they probably would have.
I'm sometimes shocked by friends who have ill family members, and realizing that they have absolutely no knowledge of treatment options, survival times, etc. They don't do any research and don't ask questions of the doctors. I think these are the type of situations that often result in over-treatment.
As a patient, you have the right to question every treatment and get second opinions - if a doctor won't discuss your situation, then it's time to find a new doctor.
Remember when I just mentioned he had FANTASTIC INSURANCE? guess what happened next in one of those 'cancer clinic' specialty places I now detest!
They gave him false hope after false hope, just so he would agree to all the surgeries, chemo, radiation, etc. They treated him like a 'guinea pig' all because he was a CASH COW!!!!!
He spent the next 1 1/2yrs agreeing to all sorts of stuff that just put him in absolute agony. My personal opinion is.... he was subjected to torture... all in the name of.... HIS INSURANCE BENEFITS!
!
OMG, you are so right. My mom had fantastic insurance. She had Medicare but her supplemental insurance policy she bought in 1982 or something and had it 30 years and it paid for everything. You cannot buy a policy like that now. But she had congestive heart failure and when she went to the ER, she was always admitted and the community hospital would keep her just as long as her insurance kept paying. They ran every test, did every kind of therapy, etc. Looking back, I wish I had not let them keep her like that - but it was mostly after the fact that I realized what was going on. The bigger, busy hospitals that were full would stabilize her congestive heart failure and discharge her. But the community hospital would milk it for all they could.
My dad, on the other hand, only had Medicare and VA. If he went to the emergency room they sent him right home. Turns out he had metastatic prostate cancer but we didn't know it till he died because they never checked him out for anything. They'd give him medicine and send him home. We even ASKED an ER doctor if it was possible that his prostate cancer had returned/spread because he was having back pain. The ER doctor said "no." Two months later he was dead. At my insistence that SOMETHING was wrong, they finally did a bone scan one week before he died. It showed widespread bone metastases. We got the results of the bone scan after his death.
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