From all of us at Medicaid + Medicare - we slashed the budget on your mothers, sisters, wives and girlfriends. No more ‘free ride’ comprehensive cancer screening. Have a blessed day in our Greatness.
Under His Eye.
Yay!
No more breast cancer screening for me!! Today I was told it would be $520 for my sonogram, ‘just letting you know because you’ll have to sign a waver’. I got the call as we were getting ready to go. I received a text the other day 👇🏻, but since I don’t have medicare i assumed that they were just screwing over women over 65.
That sonogram has been free for… ever. 15 years or so.
Talked with the woman for a half hour. She bought my book. Shes been making these calls all week.
Those budget cuts you cheered for? This is the money saved. Cancer screening.
Greatness! 1 out of 8 women will get breast cancer. With just mammogram detection? HOLY COW will alot of those be missed by what is I’d say is the second worst cancer diagnostic test. Well… in many ways it’s first worst? Its 50% efficacy once you combine false positives and false negatives is something. Plus, making women think breast cancer takes a year, rather than a few weeks to grow is marketing genius. Point is to be effective, 3-4 times a year sould be best. But you’re not worth it. 💜
So the easiest solution is to simply declare I do not have nor will I ever get breast cancer.
When I stop feeling this way, maybe I’ll sit down with the one doctor I keep simply because he helped design this system that now is killing people. Together we will figure out the appropriate and maybe slightly truth stretched reasoning I need an ultrasound vs a mammogram. And I have a pretty good idea that it will be:
Because I’m disabled. Its clean. Simple.
I do love the irony of using the one cutesy title I’m never allowed to dispose of as a means to get what I want.
I often am as mad as I am jealous that Seth’s father has a don’t worry, be happy guide to medicine. He doesn’t really ever go to doctors, because he’s healthy. Never has any cancer screenings, no annual physicals (well, he goes every 5 or 6 years. To talk. But he’s afraid of blood draws. So he just doesn’t do them). And at first, it sounds crazy. Especially after what happened to his mom.
But his mom was healthy. Then she had a cough. Then they wasted about 4 months gaslighting her it was allergies (you know how bad allergies are in Buffalo in March? April?!
But then, it starts to make sense. Because of what happened to his mom. If she wasnt stage 4 when they started, she was by the time she demanded an x-ray. And if her odds were decent after 1 round of DUAL therapy (keytruda, with a diubke chemo chaser) they were non-existant after 4 months on just chemo.
You can do the right things, and people fuck up and it costs a life and they shake their heads and mutter ‘damn cancer.’ No. You killed her. You delayed dx by 4 months, then you pulled the wrong drug. Cancer was at the scene, but gmher doctor was hokding the bloody knife. I don’t pretend.
A few years ago I told him Setg’s dad I didn’t want to do cancer screenings anymore (lung CT’s). And he said, then don’t. And it was so simple it was like a slap. To anyone else, they’d think I was crazy.
I agreed to then scan until i finished the book. Since then a much more accurate sputum test (CyPath lung) has come out. Now I’ll get that. Unlikely because insurance hates effective things. It’s far easier to get a scan that i have NO ONE to decipher for me. So, i’ll eitger have the most effective screen this year, or nothing.
No symptoms. No scan.
I’m tired. So damn tired of the medical system not being about health. Im over it.
That’s the point i think people can miss. Im not just whining when i complain about the refusal to lift ‘terminal, incurable’ from me. It’s a beat-down of mental health. Its a little black cloud of doubt over every plan, every day because not one of my doctors will highlight the idiocy of this arbitrary jail - bars formed by chemotherapy the past 80 years, a refusal to update with the advent if immunotherapy, and the inability to prove I’ve no invisible undetectable inactive cancer cells in my body, inert and ready to SING. Of course i do. So do you. Thats the beauty of my cage. Even if I prove it, because it’s bullshit i still don’t win. Because it’s a game designed to be unable to win.
Because we can’t cure stage 4 cancer *wink wink* If we could, EVERYONE would want - cure. Best to leave it hopeless. Best to leave people on their knees then tell them the truth.
But more so? It’s the knowledge that if a breast cancer screening, ir a colonoscopy, or any cancer were to ever show up?
I get to start off as terminal because of the decunct lung cancer.. And this most likely would allow me to die from a ‘caught early’ cancer, which is what these screenings are about. Because I’ll only ever be allowed palliative care. For stage 1. For stage 4c. For anything.
Get it? Treating me for a breast cancer would be like throwing good money after bad they say. To my healthy face.
They say it to my face. These people, who never once tried to save my life.
So why would I go looking for trouble? Caught early or at last call, I’m a dead girl walking.
So the only answer? Go by how I feel. I feel good.
No cancer today!