Recently in health Category

(This is a response to someone on a discussion site that is against the government doing something about medical care.  I figured I'd share it here since I took the time to write it.)

I was a healthy mid-20s guy starting his own business. I had just left Seattle to move to an area where I could build my business with low cost of living.

Little did I know that just a few months after I had moved I'd have been diagnosed with Lymphoma. As a healthy young guy, or so I had thought, I didn't need to spend my precious little resources on insurance. What a big mistake I had made.

Now after a year of cancer treatments and a bill exceeding $150,000, I wish the government would have done something to help me out. I've gotten nothing. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and American Cancer Society have done more for me than the government ever has, not that they have done much mind you.

In speaking with friends and colleagues in other countries, no one can believe that I'm in so much debt, that the treatments cost so much, and that the government hasn't helped me with any of it.

I'm very much in favor of having the government help us folks that were "in the wrong place" when the wrong time hit us. If only my cancer would have waited a few months, I would have been able to get insurance. Now no insurance company is willing to cover me. What can I do now?

My treatments are finally over. I made it through the cancer and the harsh treatments. But now I've got a whole new problem: paying for my medical bills. I hope bankruptcy isn't my only chance to survive this.

I believe that if you're happy with your coverage, you should keep it. For the rest of us, we need something. I need something. I'm not dying of cancer anymore but of the collection agencies wanting my every dime. I'm dying of phone calls every five to thirty minutes from the collectors. I'm dying under the weight of these bills.

I am very thankful for the medical providers that I have. I just wish they could get paid a just amount (but not the outrageous that they are asking for). I wish I could be the one to pay them, but it's impossible.

What's a guy like me to do? I'm going to be paying for this for the rest of my life.. and it still won't be enough.

If the government can do something to prevent my situation, I'm voting for it. I wouldn't wish this upon anyone.

My eyelashes are too long.  They won't curl.  I cut them once and they ended up just poking me in the eye.  I see them all the time.  It looks like my glasses are dirty, but it's just my eyelashes.  I try to clean my glasses anyway, but it doesn't help.  My eye doctor (from years ago) told me I'd never be able to wear contacts because of them.  He also said he has to pull out eyelashes for his elderly customers.  I don't really want to pull them out.  I just don't want to have to look through them all the time.  What can I do?

I can see how using the Internet to track down a symptom can make one believe they have every disease in the book.  Ugh.  I wish I could afford to see a doctor.

So the docs poked a hole in my neck, push a fishing instrument down into my heart, and recovered the catheter that went AWOL.  No trouble, no pain, and no anesthesia.

The doc said that the catheter was flattened at the end that broke off.  It seems that it was crushed by some bone in my chest and eventually gave way.  I'm glad I wasn't getting chemo at the time.  That wouldn't have been pleasant.

The office that was to help pay for the operation didn't know why I was there and had to wait until they talked to the boss to approve any help.  They did finally say that I was to get a discount (though I doubt it'll be much of a discount).

The only real annoyance I had on the trip was a bunch of homeless people asking for money I didn't have.

Otherwise, all went well.  And it was nice to get away from town for awhile.

So they got the port out.  Great.  But when the doctor asks why the catheter is so short and if he really was the one that put it in, it's not so great.

He poked and prodded.  He couldn't find the catheter.  But the x-ray found the catheter.  See the images below.  Notice the big cloudy area in the middle?  That's my heart.  That's where my catheter is.

(X-ray from December 12, 2008 - click to make bigger)
(X-ray from September 7, 2008 - click to make bigger)

Tomorrow I finally get my port removed.  My port has been detective for many months now and, with my oncologist's help, I finally have a surgeon willing to remove it knowing that they probably won't get paid for it.

I'm already past $150,000 in medical debt and bankruptcy is a likely outcome.  I don't know any other way to deal with it.  Medicaid and Social Security are unwilling to help me any more than they have (one session of chemo is all I was able to get from them) and having no health insurance hurts the situation.  If you don't have health insurance, figure out how to get it.

In my research, I've found that Lymphoma isn't really preventable.  Other than taking loads of vitamin B3 (something between 5000 and 10000 IUs per day), there isn't a lot you can do.  I went from being a normal, healthy 24 year old to an being critically unhealthy Stage 4a Primary Mediastinal Large B-Cell Lymphoma cancer patient.  It hit me hard and can hit you too.

I think the last time it was successfully flushed was in August or September.  When I went back for my routine port flush, the Oakley hospital nurses couldn't flush it.  I went to Colby to see if they could do it, with no luck.  Now it's likely filled with lovely blood clots and is a definite health hazard for me.  The port feeds direct into my SVC, which apparently leads directly to the heart.  If one of those clots come loose, it could cause me some seriously unhappy health trouble.  I'm sure you can imagine what trouble that would be.

The doctors and nurses believe that the tube that runs from the port to the SVC is cracked and leaking.  When the nurses tried to flush the port, it caused terrible pain outside of my port, to the left side (where the port doesn't go) and there was no blood return at all.  I had a similar reaction when I was in the hospital and my IV had started leaking outside of the vein in my arm.  Thankfully neither of those times I was getting chemo as that stuff is horribly toxic.

Anyway, I'm getting the damned port out.  I'm very happy about this.