WarriorSpouse wrote:I think you have a good plan... Keep Dana Farber in the mix. MGH v. DF, I'd take DF, and we have when having to chose a plan. You live in a great area with excellent options.
After your tumor shrinks with radiation, you may be ale to seek more comfortable treatments. As for a $2K copay, even better than $6K!.. All chemo, even pills, should be covered by HC because they simulate oncology outpatient care. Have them mailed to you via Oncologist prescription. The costs are less expensive. Always call your insurance to verify and/or use an oncology nurse navigator to assist you. Most hospitals in the area have one on staff to help you as a cancer care advocate.
Good luck... Keep us posted!
WS
I've read from another poster that MGH is easier to work with than DFCI - I really struggled with getting appointments at DFCI. Once I went through the intake process, though, it was a lot easier. My sister had brain surgery recently to get a stent installed and that went well so I'm overall really impressed with MGH but DFCI is a specialist place. My oncologist recommended going with MGH for the surgeon if I had a choice but it was easier scheduling my second opinions with everything at DFCI/B&W.
Yes, we are really fortunate to have a lot of great hospitals in the area. I have read several stories where patients have had to travel long distances to get consults, second opinions, etc., and where patients didn't have good options locally.
I am hoping that the tumor starts shrinking after a week. I would be very happy with even a 10% reduction. Things have improved in that area in that I'm going daily. There is some soreness afterwards but the mental stress was actually a lot worse than the physical stress.
I got the first batch of pills yesterday. I was greatly relieved when they arrived as I had never done mail-order prescriptions before. I much prefer in-store pharmacies but that's mainly because our phone connection was really awful. Xeloda is a class 3 drug on my healthcare plan so the copays are $90. I got the 500 mg and 150 mg pills so a total of $180 in copays. That covers only four weeks as that's the maximum that my insurance will cover at one time. In the third week, I'll have to get the rest of the prescription filled for another $180. The oncology nurse set them up for me with the prescription but I thought that she was going to order them but it turned out that I had to do that - so a bit of a communications problem.
Regarding the house stuff - we bought a starter back in the 1980s and planned to upgrade in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, I looked at prices and felt that they were getting to bubble levels. Little did I know that prices would keep going up into 2007 when the real bubble popped. So we could use a bigger place and I've been thinking about it for a while. Until cancer hit. Talk about putting your life on hold.
I'm fortunate that there are folks that have gone through this successfully with similar circumstances and people going through it now though a little ahead of me so that I can learn what to expect. No two cases are the same but there are similarities.