Where's Nodawgs??

jvancik said:

... thanks very much! ... I found Nodawg's web page via your suggestion ...

nodawgs said:

Nodawgs is Rat Chere
Wow!...(blush, blush). Thanks for the compliments; I sincerely mean that. I've had a rough time lately and sort of fell in the ditch a couple of times with a taxotere, then a mitoxantrone chemo regimen.

I hope this never happens to any of you guys, but I recently had to move the chemo administration part of my treatment up closer to Plano (just north of Dallas). Although M.D. Anderson-Houston still calls all the shots on overall treatment, there was just no way I could get back/forth to Houston for two, maybe three times/week (or even more) for neupogen injections, interim infusions with Kytril and fluids, doc exams, CBC labs, and other stuff related to most chemo regimens.

Anyway, let me throw this out here just in case you ever see it happening to you. Not kidding one bit; this onco group up here in my neck of the woods nearly messed me up, big time. The practice consists of 3 dudes and this lady onco from the other side of the planet. They trotted their butts over to the other side of earth to set up an oncology practice...chemo, chemo, chemo...and the damndest approach to a medical scam you could ever imagine.

I don't know whether or not you've ever been on chemo, but that stuff makes me dumber than a rock. I probably wasn't the brightest light bulb in the box, anyway, but by the time I hit the 3rd and 4th Taxotere infusions, I was just barely coherent. Through all the mental cobwebs of trying to rationalize all this, I finally started grasping what this one onco was doing to me...but I just had a hard time believing any human being would do something like this to another.

If there was such a thing as Stage V, I guess that'd be me: metastasized, hormone refractory prostate cancer with mets to everywhere but my dern hair (neck, spine, humori, rib cage, sternum, and femori). It's no secret I'm terminal, but...big deal; so is everyone else...sooner or later. I want you to know that I found out these bozos were using me as a human chemo receptacle to pump as much chemo as possible into what time I had left!

Yeah!...now, check this out: Nearly OD'd on chemo, I became so incoherent, I'm not even realizing they are compressing my chemo regimen by squeezing in extra infusions. A big part of this equation is the billing of my Medicare insurance and a very liberal supplemental coverage policy through an AARP underwriter. It's fantast coverage that basically covers everthing Medicare doesn't! I've never been a penny out of pocket since having it. They're filing claims against primary and secondary insurances for $9,600 per infusion. To explain, each claim grouped together all the services and drugs (CBC labs, doc exams, neupogen injections, etc.) that go along with each infusion. In other words, page after page of $9,600 claims reflected the total amount for each, every-3-week "infusion package."

These jerks were sneaking in extra infusions at every-2-week intervals, rather than conforming to the every-3-week infusion frequency the protocol requires!!...yet the 75mg dosing was the same! I was so full of that toxic crap, I couldn't scratch my butt with a yard rake, couldn't remember squat, would lose track of which day was what, lost over 20-pounds, had a whopping PSA of 1075.0, and couldn't function to do very basic things. I'm serious...I'm almost staggering around like a zombie or methadone freak on crack withdrawal. I didn't catch it and my caregiver didn't either! Also, I'm so out of it, I'm not watching and didn't even think to check on whether or not they were doing blood draws for PSA assays. You have to do that, in sync with the infusions, to track chemo effectiveness, and more importantly, to identify the moment the stuff starts demonstrating a refractory response.

The best I can figure, I started demonstrating a refractory reponse to Taxotere somewhere between infusion No. 5 and 7. Judging from horrific side effects and bone/muscle pain that was off the scale, nausea and vomiting, just after the 5th infusion, I was probably demonstrating a refractory response right about then. According to the clinical trials approving Taxotere for prostate cancer, the mean number of infusions these poor dudes made at 75mg dosing was only 7, anyway...and that ain't many, considering the complete protocol calls for 14. Somewhere in there, I had a couple of brain cells that had enough sense to demand a PSA assay. That's how I started finding out what these cons were pulling. Yeah, I know...that's a strong term to use, but there's nothing else that more accurately describes this. Somehow, I had enough kept up with all this enough to mark my chemo days and various treatments on a calendar I keep in my leather folder...plus...I always kept my CSN "diary" of sorts up to date with each and every procedure. How I had maintained a need and will to do that, I'll never know. Looking back, I don't even remember some of the entries I wrote in there!

I'm still having a hard time believing any physician would do something like this at the enormous expense of pain and nausea discomfort, or even possible death, to another person. Well, as soon as I got my hands on the PSA path report, they immediately switched me to mitoxantrone. I'm not believing this! I fell for it, again! I'm still goofy from the Taxotere and didn't have sufficient cognitive function to realize they did it, again!!...starting me on mitoxantrone a week too early...long before wash-out of the Taxotere, then attempted the same scenario once more after that! It was so bad and I was so messed up with perpetual vomiting, on one week alone, they had me coming to the clinic for Kytril and fluid infusions every single day...just to keep me vertical and able to take another infusion, one way or another. The following week, it was every other day...Kytril and fluids...just to keep me vertical. Those same brain cells remembered my last PSA and I demanded another PSA assay...or...the ultimatum was I was going to refuse the next chemo. Not very smart, they have the patient wag their own records folder around to all the stops they are scheduled in the clinic: to the exam room, the room for neupogen injections, the chemo room, etc. So...I went in the bathroom, opened that sucker up...and shurnuff...right on top was my latest PSA assay number...a whopping 1200.7!! The mitoxantrone had been refractory all along as well...accounting for all the horrific bone/muscle pain and off-the-scale nausea and vomiting.

I suspect most reading this blurb are younger and not on Medicare. However, for your info, you can now go to the Medicare website and look at all the claims that folks are charging against your insurance. Of course, you get a paper copy in the mail, but an online copy is so much easier to scroll through. In the case of my supplemental policy, I can do the same thing...access all claims online. Let me just say this and let you read between the lines: these guys just may have a few legal issues coming their way in their zest to pump my near corpse-like shell full of chemo. I ain't dead, yet and the party ain't over. What these people did to me gives me an incredible boost. You can bet your **** I'll be around to tend to some business that badly needs attention.

You guys take care...and watch out for stuff like this. I couldn't get a grip on it for quite awhile, either...but apparently, it really does happen.

Nodawgs