The Big C

Creme Brulee with a side of tears

                                                   
The only thing cancer patients should ever have to focus on is getting better, thats the only thing. Kaiser called today, they won't approve the chemo treatment MB needs to keep her going. Tomorrow morning we have an "expedited review". It's the lame process Kaiser has to appeal a decision. They will have two of those, waste more time and still say no. They will say there is not enough evidence supporting an FDA approved medication that suppresses angiogenises(angiogenises is the tumors blood supply, this medication cuts off its supply). The medicine is Avastin, google it, it's FDA approved and Kaiser refuses to give it to MB. How do I know Kaiser will continue to reject it? Well, this is the same process that I had to go through when I was fighting for a referral to Stanford for MB to do a clinical trial last year. Maybe when MB is dead they'll approve Avastin.

While Kaiser continues to waste MB's precious time, MB sits at home with a cough that seems to get worse, her mobility is limited due to soreness caused by tumors that continue to grow because no one told them to take a break while a life or death decision was being tossed around slowly by her insurance carrier. In the meantime, I file paperwork, have telephone meetings and run all over town trying to find a solution to MB's problem. Debating with Kaiser on MB's behalf is a full time job. I often wonder what it would be like for MB without me, what do other Cancer patients who want to keep fighting the "system" do when they are weakened from chemo and cancer. I'm getting tired of all this paper pushing bearacracy and I'm HEALTHY, what do the poor sick people do? It enrages me to know other people are going through this right now and they don't have a WMV(wild Mariela Vargas) as their advocate. Do they just die thinking that more could have been done if some paper pusher at Kaiser had seen more than just a number? It's truly sickening!

I wish Irene and all those people who keep denying MB's shot at life would have been here for our New Years Eve dinner. I wish they would have sat at our table. I wish they would have heard MB and PB reminisce about the days when they met. I wish they would have seen my little sister leave the table and cry her eyes out in the bathroom before returning to the table with swollen eyes, trying to pretend everything was ok, before dessert. If they had seen MB and PB embrace in tears as they comforted eachother during the most difficult time of their lives, maybe then, they wouldn't make an already unbearable situation absolutely hellish.  I wish they would see MB through our eyes, as a human being, a Mother, Wife, Sister, Daughter and not a deficit in their end of the year profits. I wish.