One Way To Stand Up To Cancer – Get Tested When and Where it Counts

Because I neither requested nor received permission from my brother to tell this story, I shall refrain from identifying him by name or divulge which brother this is about.

My brother’s life may have been saved by a simple, routine medical procedure that anyone over the age of 50 have, no strike that, MUST have, a colonoscopy. There I said it. Nasty thing that it is, this one medical test is one of the most hated and intentionally avoided of all medical tests people avoid. And it saves lives. Case in point, my brother.

My much, much, much, much, much, much older brother is over…70. That’s all I’ll say for now. And, when he told me several weeks ago he was not feeling all that well and experiencing some unusual symptoms that involved his lower bowel, I asked him when he last had a colonoscopy. His response? “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Now my brother is not undereducated, stupid or poor. He does not live in rural America and can read. He is a professional who has spent his entire life being informed about many things, including managing his health. Up until recently, he has done an outstanding job.

While my brother has had a few bouts with some minor issues over the years, nothing thus far has been life threatening. And when I got that wimpy response I did not just go away into the night and allow him to get “off the hook”. I insisted he get the test done, and, the sooner the better.

Where are we now? He had the colonoscopy and afterward learned he had a 3 centimeter cyst in his lower bowel that, while pathology from the test indicated was not necessarily cancerous, tests also showed some other “abnormal cells” in the area. It needed to be removed, surgically.

My brother moved swiftly to get the procedure out of the way, before he had too much time to think about it. That was the right thing to do. The complex laparoscopic procedure required two surgeons and several hours on the operating table followed by being in the hospital for almost a full week. During his recovery at the hospital and now at home, he is finding out that surgery, on any level, is neither fun nor easy in terms of full recuperation.

BUT, here’s the kicker to this story. This past week, my brother went back to see the surgeon for routine follow up. It was during that meeting he learned something that set him back off his chair. The final pathology came back and the fact is, he has…or had…cancer. Stage II cancer.

Here is the good news. All of the lymph nodes which were removed during surgery have been reviewed by pathologists and found to be cancer free. So, what is the bottom line? My brother had cancer before he knew it. His colonoscopy showed there was something not quite right and he elected to have a cyst removed – in a procedure that required surgery. That has not only extended his life but may have saved it.

Had he elected to avoid the colonoscopy in the next couple of years, he would have developed symptoms consistent with State III or Stage IV cancer and it would have been, too late. Period. The end would have been devastating for him and his entire family.

He is now consulting with an oncologist to determine if he should do anything further this year before getting another colonoscopy next year. Chemotherapy would have been ordered in the old days but the fact part of his colon was removed, the part that had cancer, and the fact all of the lymph nodes which were removed were “clear” may allow him to skip that treatment. Because he was proactive and acted quickly, he may now be able to resume normal life for a person who up until now has never come this close to a complete health involved disaster.

My message is simple. Tests are available to men and women to make sure all our body parts are functioning correctly. I have previously stated my mother died because of lung cancer. I have previously stated my wife’s mother is battling cancer. I have previously stated I have been doing on-going battles with skin cancer. Now my brother has had a very close call with colon cancer.

I attended a wake recently and reminded a friend with me in the room funerals are for the living. The dead are not really aware we are there (sorry to step on toes here).

If you love your family, get tested.

Super Bowl Sunday…So What?

So this is the big day, the day millions of football fans have been waiting for all year. What’s that? You say we have a problem here? I agree.

Today it’s the Packers against the Steelers. Great names. What do they mean? Are the Packers…packin’? Are the Steelers…steelin’? Nope, neither is.

This is a year when no team from any of the most populous states (California, New York, Texas or Florida) is playing. We don’t have a repeat opportunity as neither team won last year.

The Packers and Steelers are wholesome blue collar mid-west teams, from way back when football all got started. So who cares? Nobody. That is unless you are from the geographical area of either team, which represent fairly small media markets compared to teams on the coasts and from much larger cities…

So, here’s the thing. I think those companies that paid all that money to advertise on the most watched sports day of the year, many just to see the whacky new and highly anticipated commercials, are going to be sadly disappointed in the ratings today. Many people can’t watch because they are still fighting the continuing bad weather issues moving across the country. Even the folks that went to party in Dallas were rudely received by some really bad weather this week.

I have some interest in the Super Bowl this year, in the following order. I enjoy seeing new and clever commercials that make me laugh. The Packers are a wild card team that was not figured to make it through the playoffs (remember Brett Farve left there a few years ago). And truth be told, I would love to see Ben Roethlisberger get his butt kicked and have to eat dirt. Yeah, that’s motivation.

So, raise that Old Milwaukee, Schlitz, Blatz, Pabst Blue Ribbon if you are from Wisconsin and your Iron City Beer if you are from Pittsburgh. You know what, the truth is, the real old and most famous beers, more of them, at least, are from Wisconsin. So, I predict the Packers will win. Besides, I want to see Ben Roethlisberger get his butt kicked and have to eat dirt. Oh, yeah – I already said that.

Enjoy the game. And the commercials. Someone has to watch, right?

The NEW Bermuda Triangle: Your Doctor, Your Retail Pharmacy and Your Medical Insurance Company

If you think you are in control of how you manage your health, you are in denial or not well informed. You and your health care provider may come to a mutual decision about your taking a certain, specific medication and he or she can write a prescription for you to obtain it, but you still may not be able to get it. Neither you nor your doctor are in control of that decision. Your insurance company is.

More and more medical insurance companies are turning to third party pharmaceutical partners to handle the dispensing of the medications you take. And they have the power to prevent you from receiving the medication your doctor ordered for you, at least using a reasonable co-pay. They can go so far as to specifically tell you what other drug you CAN have.

I just tried to obtain a re-fill of a medication I have been taking for a few months which is working for me. But it has no generic format. My medical insurance provider made a change on my behalf January 1st passing off the responsibility for approving my monthly maintenance medications and other drugs I may need, approved and requested by my physician, to a company that uses a secret formula to determine if they will approve the prescription – MONEY.

For the past few days I have been talking to my pharmacy, who has told me my re-fill was “blocked” by my insurance company. I called my insurance company and they said I needed to talk to my doctor to get “prior authorization” and have him send it back to the pharmacy. I did that. BUT, it turns out my insurance company is not involved in the decision to approve what my doctor wants me to have. It is another company that is in control and they want me to have something else. And, they have the legal power to do this.

For the record my insurance company is Aetna. And, for the record they are now using some company called Express Scripts to approve or deny the prescriptions my doctor and I agree I should be taking. I just spoke to someone at Express Scripts. The person I spoke to admitted they blocked my re-fill because it had no generic formulary. Therefore they want me to call my physician and have him call them back with a prior authorization for a completely different medication Express Scripts says I can have. Isn’t that great?

People were concerned about Communism and Socialism in the 1950s but that fear went away along with the bomb shelters people were building in their back yards. We have a much larger problem than the Russians today, big pharmaceutical companies dictating to us, through third party administrators working with our insurance companies as to what we can obtain, at a reasonable cost (read: co-pay).

I am mad as hell and yet…I am stuck. I have had to acquiesce to the terms dictated to me today by a drug pusher (not the doctor) – a company that does not know me and never met me has decided what is best for me. Do I sound pissed? The most difficult part of writing this was using language that is acceptable and not offensive to the weak at heart.

Nobody, and I mean nobody had better get in my way today...damn it all…