The Business of Hope vs. Lies

[moncoeur]

If I had know then what I know now I would have made different decisions, but the fact is that I didn't and like you all say above getting a straight answer out of a doctors can be an act in futility.  The absolute last thing I wanted to hear was that my husband was going to die, I was of the mindset that if they said those words out loud then they would be true and I didn't want to hear it. I thought if I prayed hard enough and believed enough for both of us that we would be those 1% assholes who make it. But of course we were not.

 

I hate that the disease companies only talk about the survivors. They never talk about the reality of cancer and how much it sucks. It's always smiling faces showing how strong of fighters they are. I hate the ridiculous cancer commercials too!

 

Hospitals can be terrifying places and I don't understand a system that is more than happy to rack up charges that can bankrupt you but doesn't have the time to sit and answer a few questions.

 

I wish our first doctor would have just explained the situation to us that treatment was palliative not curative. My husband had stage 4 colon cancer and our doctor said we may still have a curable disease. So imaging my shock when I see my husband start to deteriorate after his first chemo treatment.  I second guess every decision I made, I wish I had taken another path. I wish I had fought for him more, there are so many things I wish but in the end my wishing wasn't enough. I hate that medicine is a business because you cannot trust a doctor when it is about profit.

 

I hate that most of our conversations were around insurance and whether or not they would pay for treatment before he did the recommended treatment. My husband was just a commodity to make money, if there was a treatment but our insurance didn't cover it then they would just let him die. The thing is this is reality for most people. That if you have the wrong insurance or not enough or not any then you don't get treatment.

 

I work in the free medical clinic in my town and when I do the patient testimonials they say they trust our doctors more than the doctors in private clinics or hospitals. They also say they get better care with us and don't want to leave once they get insurance and no longer qualify to be our patients. But even in my clinic I get discouraged at the callousness of our doctors. I tell our nursing director what a bitch she is and she says that being horrible wards off cancer and only the good ones go. I hate that she says shit like that to me knowing my husband died of cancer. There are people in this world that make me just want to give up sometimes.

 

When it is my turn to face cancer and statistically it will be,  knowing I don't have an advocate or a caregiver, and how hard just being in treatment is I would just let my time run out.

 

I wish I could sleep at night with a feeling that I did the best I could and got him the best care I could but that is not the way I feel. I feel like I picked the wrong team, that had I gone left instead of right he would still be here or would have been here longer. I feel like I chose MD Anderson because they have the best marketing for being ranked number one. I would say they gave the worst care we experienced and it is so hard to live with the decision to move him there. I feel like I was duped into taking him there because they were supposed to be the best. When it is about money,advertising, and profits how can you ever know for sure you did the right thing?

 

Cancer is a truly horrible thing, and the experience of the medical system can make it worse sometimes.

[Guest littlebirdie]

Hospitals can be terrifying places and I don't understand a system that is more than happy to rack up charges that can bankrupt you but doesn't have the time to sit and answer a few questions.

 

This is one of my biggest issues with our healthcare system as a whole. It's all about numbers; people don't matter to the big machine.

 

We were lucky in that, except for the surgeons/oncologists at U of M that we saw in the beginning, everyone who was involved in his treatment was either a friend of ours or a friend of a friend. They were so good to us the whole time. We said we wanted honesty about his chances and they never wavered.

 

The cost of treatment and the fact that we were dropped from our insurance plan six months into the ordeal will never make sense to me.