Quote:
Originally Posted by wdfifteen
A good friend just got the news that he has prostate cancer, but he had not kept up with his health and by the time he knew he had cancer it had metastasized. Now he has bone cancer too.
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This might not be the place for it, but I'm so pissed out our system of healthcare it isn't funny. Even if a person does their regular annual checkup it can be missed.
My dad goes to see his family doc yearly. He was diagnosed with low grade B cell lymphoma about 2 years ago and is being monitored. We go to see a doc every 3 months for bloodwork and every 6 for imaging. He recently started experiencing back pain. Upon further investigation, he is found to have prostate cancer that metastasized to bone.
How does this happen? Oh that's right! They weren't monitoring the PSA of an 85 year old male while doing all the other bloodwork. I discovered by going through his My Chart that during a urologist visit last January it was noted that is PSA was 6.4. I'm told that's not way outside of the norm for a person his age. It was "suggested" he have a follow up test done in 4 months. I wasn't at that visit and didn't get that "suggestion". How does a urologist office not just schedule the follow up test? I asked the hematologist he was seeing why PSA wasn't included in bloodwork. The seemed aware of the elevated reading back in January and "thought" he had followed up locally.
We simply do not have a proactive system of healthcare and it's killing people as a result (Don't get me wrong, my dad is 85. With or without prostate cancer, I know his days are numbered) We're told we need to be our own healthcare advocate and that's 100% accurate since it seems clear the system doesn't look for potential health issues but rather it reacts once one comes up.
What I'm getting at here is, We all need to be proactive. We can't take "you're getting older" as part of an explanation for a health issue. I'll be far more forceful with docs relating to my dad's care as well as my own, I think we all have to be. I could write a book on the things I've experienced with both my mom's care and now my dad's. Sorry for the rant but I had to get that off my chest somewhere.