To the editor: As talked about within the op-ed, a failure by docs to speak, navigate and promote fairness might additionally imply a scarcity of up-to-date medical data (“Being insured in America is just not the identical as accessing care,” March 19). Sure, California ranks excessive within the quickly rising discipline of most cancers therapy, however typically, whether or not in our state or throughout the nation, physicians won’t concentrate on the most recent expertise. I do know this firsthand, as I used to be recognized with terminal most cancers in November 2022.
My daughter was 4 months pregnant and anticipating our first grandchild. Medical doctors didn’t count on me to see him based mostly on my prognosis.
However my hospital, Cedars-Sinai, practiced state-of-the-art drugs and ran a biomarker evaluation on the most cancers, revealing a mutation. Additional therapy utilizing focused medicine after it unfold has put me within the class of “no proof of illness,” and now I’ve lived to satisfy not just one grandchild, however two.
In at present’s world, you need to go to a “heart of excellence” the place prime docs observe, even when they’re out of state. It might save your life.
Robin Clough, Santa Clarita
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To the editor: Visitor contributor David Robles’ piece jogged my memory of my pal, Jessica, who at age 50 developed a thymoma — a tumor on her thymus gland. Making an attempt to diagnose a cough, her physician took an X-ray of her lungs, which confirmed a faint shadow above her lungs and coronary heart. By the point an extra scan recognized it as a tumor, it was Stage 4.
Insurance coverage paid for an oncologist who handled the tumor historically, with radiation and, I assume, chemotherapy. At her second-to-last assembly with the oncologist, he declared he had cured her.
Jessica had been researching and located that experimental surgical procedure eradicating all of the necrotic tissue across the tumor website was the one assure of the tumor not coming again. Her insurance coverage wouldn’t cowl the surgical procedure. When she requested, “Nicely, now what do I do?,” the response was, “Palliative care?”
Certain sufficient, the tumor got here raging again inside a month or two. To this present day, I want she had merely paid out of pocket and fought with the insurance coverage firm afterward. She may be alive at present.
Betsy Rothstein, Lengthy Seashore
