Was It Cancer?
Chemotherapy
Recently I wrote about a family member who was diagnosed with stage four cancer. After two surgeries, chemotherapy, and some, ahem, alternative treatment, she is apparently cancer free. The most recent surgery involved removing a large number of mucinous tumors from her abdomen. After examining about forty tumors by the pathologists, they found no cancer.
What went on? This process started several years ago when she had her gallbladder out. As they lifted it out, it ruptured and bile sprayed throughout her abdomen. Our bodies protect themselves from nasty stuff like bile by producing mucus. Mucus protects the cell walls from digestive fluids like bile, whose purpose is breaking cell walls down. My guess is that her body created new mucus producing cells to protect tissues from bile. Those were the mucinous tumors. The initial surgeons ruled the tumors cancerous, this latest surgery, non-cancerous.
What changed? Did the initial surgery, chemo, and the alternative stuff do the job along with her own immune system? Was the initial diagnosis wrong and she did not have stage four cancer? Stage four cancer is bad news. Some people survive, but the prognosis is usually grave. Is cancer still lurking somewhere? Should she stay scared?
What a bizarre situation. My experiences with the health care system have been mostly positive. It has not been fun, but I am alive and most everything still works. Without modern medicine I would be dead. Did modern medicine save my relative’s life or is the whole ordeal just a succession of errors? We will know more in a few months when she goes back for more imaging. Will it be inconclusive and they will have to get core samples of tissue to test? What is sure is the fear and suspense is not over.
The scary thing for me with the health care system is the loss of control. I like to think of myself as having some degree of control of my life. I have watched parents, in-laws, friends, and now my relative fall into the medical abyss. Doctors, hospitals, health care professionals, drug companies, insurance companies, and others we are not aware of make their money. We endure pain, suspense, uncertainty, and loss. The system continues to grow.
John Maynard Keynes said that economic growth can happen simply by digging holes and filling them in. People get paid, money gets spent, the hole digging industry grows, and everybody is happy. It sometimes seems to me that the health care system is much the same. Right now the health care holes being dug are patient portals. The intent is to give patients access to their medical records and facilitate the exchange of information between medical entities. The VA does it (sort of) Kaiser does it if you can work the system, so now everyone is trying it.
The result? Missing records, inability to access records, many hours consumed inputting data, and careers for a new generation of IT people writing software and trying to fix the software. What will it be like if a giant magnetic pulse from the sun converts all those zeros and ones documenting our lives turn into nothing? Maybe we will be back to pen, ink, and the abacus.