Frustrated

 Frustrated.  If someone were to ask how I'm doing, that would be my answer.

I spoke to Mayo Clinic this morning to see if there is any update on my admission into their program.  The very nice oncology nurse went over the doctor's notes that they had on file.  I am now in the "appointment phase", which means that they want to do a face-to-face meeting with me.  But, they are waiting for the biopsy slides, and the imaging from the recent CT scans.  (They did receive the radiologist reports of the scans.)  "That usually takes one to two weeks to get all of that in our hands" she said.  One to two weeks?  I told her that I would be happy to pick up anything they need, drive it to Minnesota, and personally hand it to them.  One to two weeks?  We live in a world where you can get anything from anywhere in the world overnight.  

Another interesting factoid that I have found is that Medical Oncology is a completely separate department from Radiation Oncology.  This seems to be universal.  In my case, I would need both for my treatment.  The nice nurse said that she would try her best to get an appointment with each department on the same day, so as to avoid me making two nine hour round trips to Mayo.

Any one who works for a good company and has good health insurance should count their blessings.  If I had good insurance in the beginning of this, I could have taken the advice of a nurse practitioner friend of mine, Nancy, and got in my truck, and drove straight to Mayo in Rochester, MN.  Mayo would have run all of their own tests, and I would have been in treatment months ago.

Not having insurance in the beginning set me on a very slow trajectory of getting care.  "We will need a $2600 deposit before we can schedule the MRI".  "We will need a $250 deposit before we can run the lab tests." they would say.  It was July 7, 2020 when I had my first MRI that showed a tumor under my left eye.  It was January 4, 2021 when it was biopsied and found to be cancer.  In the mean time, the cancer spread to the entire left side of my head. 

The moral of the story is that, not having insurance is more than just the financial aspect of paying for care, it is also an obstacle in getting care.  I have been working and contributing to Social Security since I was 13 years old, in 1975.  I have never missed one year in 45 years of working.  Shouldn't that entitle me to some kind of affordable health care?  I have six more years before I can start Medicare.  OK, I'll get off of my soapbox.

Waiting to hear from the nice nurse at Mayo Clinic. 

Dr. Schreiber (the biopsy surgeon) is hell bent on figuring out how this started.  Squamous Cell Carcinoma is a common head and neck cancer, but it always starts somewhere on the skin, then penetrates to other tissues and nerves.  Dr. Schreiber sent a referral to Dermatology.

On Wednesday, I went to see a dermatologist.  Dr. Kumbier checked me out from head to toe and found no signs of prior cancers.  She did find some dark spots on the right cheek that looked pre-cancerous, so she blasted them with liquid nitrogen.  Then, there was that bump on my left temple.  It has been there for at least 15 years.  She asked if I wanted it removed.  "Sure, let's do it!" I replied.  "If I can keep people from staring at it, and occasionally asking what it is, I'd be a happy guy."  She said it looked like a cyst, but she would send it out for pathology to look at.

I wish I knew a way to speed up this process.