This entry will be somewhat long and confusing. It was the most frustrating part of my whole ordeal to this point.
After the weekend, I start again. Monday morning go back to Oncologist #1 for a post consultation on the ENT's findings, and as we all have read about him, there doesn't seem to be any further information to assist us. Da! That comment cost me $50+$250. However, Dr O#1 gets me squeezed in with his partner, who is the radiologist of the team, of couse into her very busy schedule. That $250 was worth something. Drive home, Tuesday Drive back. Get to meet Dr O#2, lets just call her "Taz". She is 4'8" of steaming locomotive power, takes no prisoners, and even her nursing staff stay at arms length in case Taz gets mad. The original Tazmanian Devil ain't got nothing on this spitfire. See comes in to the office, barely looks at my ongoing report, whips the exam door wide open and screams down the hall to her nurse to get her a trake kit (the sex toy at the ENT's office. )
Excellent, female doctor, I may get little behind closed doors somethin somethin with her sex toy flailing about.
I got a lillte somethin' all right. She proceeds, (unlike the ENTs high pressure hose), to numb my sinuses for insertion. However, she's got what looks like a Chanel #5 atomizing bottle and proceeds to daintily poof up a couple of "PooFs" into my nose. See runs away momentarily to retrieve some other implement of torture I am sure and I look at the nurse and claim "that's all the numbing stuff"?
Seems to be a bit lacking in the numbing part but high points for patient consideration. Nursey just shrugs her shoulders as Taz reenters with full hazmat mask and apron and tells me to lean on back.
So I close my eyes and lean back into the exam chair to get a little comfortable and like a freakin rattlesnake, she on me with the sex toy. I open my eyes and this little she devil has climb up almost into my lap and ramming that sex toy down my semi-numbed throat and nasals. She's down in there grinding around like the Rotor Router Guy trying to find grandmas panties she accidental flushed down the John. Finally she stops, tells everyone in the room to look the down the scope (little tough from my point of view), and exclaims we have a possible winner!! I do believe you have a lesion located on the back of your left tongue / left tonsil. Tax climbs back down to floor lever quite proud of her finding. I am actually rather excited myself, 'that means we can begin to proceedings for treatment", I ask. No she claims, but his is a good start. I really think you need to go off the mountain down to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center for a better second opinion and perhaps a biopsy of whats in your throat to positively confirm the Squamous Carcinoma in your neck.
You know the sound of air exiting a balloon, that was the sound my soul made at that point. We got the bad guy trapped, lets round him up and hang him high at noon so the town folk can get back to life!
It was not to be. Taz had Nurse Ratchet call down to WFB Cancer Center and get me an appointment 2 days later. OK, two days isn't bad. When they gonna do, look at all my test results and make conclusion for treatment and away we go. Taz even thinks she's got a in with WFB that I could be doing my daily Radiation treatment with her only 15 minute from my house. Things are looking up.
She also tels me that WFB is very highly rated teaching cancer center in the east coast and that they work on a team basis. Sort of like House, once a week these doctors and fellows and interns all meet to discuss each individual case to come up with the best treatment for the patient. Totally makes sense, more heads are better than one in this oh so exacting science of modern cancer treatment. I'm getting excited again that the end could be near. My appointments in 5 days, June 20th with a Surgical Oncologist. It's been nearly a month since the discovery of the fine needle aspiration lymph node carcinoma but awe are so close I can feel the radiation beams.
WFB hospital in in Winston Salem, NC. A good 1.5 hour drive from my house. And of course my appointment is scheduled at 8am. Happy Happy Joy Joy.
So we get there, big shiny new glass and brick medical complex and proceed to find the Oncology section of the hospital up on it's own floor. 25minute later. We enter the onology holding reception area , and there are no less than 25 "stalls by no other better word" of greeters and insurance card copiers. Take a number, when you get called, go to your stall, and become admitted to the fold. 30 minutes later, no call. So I proceed up to one of the empty stalls to inquire what was taking so long in my case since the little sign on this person desk read,"If you haven't been served in 15 minutes, Please step forward". I stepped forward.
I was informed that there was a scheduling foo pah with one of the doctors and that would it be alright to "bend" the schedule around a tad. I informed my coral master that I had driven 2 hours to get here and was not please we had a little foo pah. She told me that everything would work out and to just have a seat and a nurse will come for you to get you vitals shortly. 45 minutes later. 265 lbs Nurse Kaneesha waddles out and calls my name. Confidence looms at the sight of over weight health care workers. I Never got that. You'd think doctors and nurses would be in great shape, not looking like they just slammed a box of Krespie Kreems! She takes me back to get my vitals, bp, weight, height and then plops me off into an small exam room, very tastefully decorated out in wood grain finishes and all the newest medical gadgetry you can put into an exam room, and proceeds to tell me the doctor will be in shortly.
There's also and brand spankin new tracyotomy sex toy waiting along one of the side walls. Oh Goodie! I get to be scoped again for the 3rd time in 3 weeks. I'll be able to light up my stomach next time a stick a flashlight to my nose, like a Purple Teletuby!
There's a very unsettling feeling one gets when doctors say certain things. Life or death flashes, painful examination possibilities. This could go on and on as far as the human psyche allows it to.
However, today. It began as oddly as I have ever encountered a medical professional. This gentlemen,
a freakin Oncology Surgeon, years of service and studies, trained with the best in table side manners and tact, walks into my exam room and the first thing out of his mouth, not hello or courteous pleasantries, He claims " Mr Grindrod, you are a very interesting man, a very interesting man indeed"!
Holly crap, what the hell does that mean? Not even a hello, how's it going, thanks for coming to see us here at WFB.
And then proceeded to introduce his nurse, hi assistance, his fellow, and his intern. I get it, it's a teaching hospital and I'm the floor show.
So he says he's seen my charts and graphs but still isn't convinced about the primary. He's getting out the sex toy!!!! Thank God his nurse filled me up with enough Novocaine powder to hold a 1 hour group session. In he went and slid around until "voile!" I have found it" He proclaims, 'Look every one look" There it is" "Please grab the scope and look for your self." So everybody in the room, the nurse, the fellow, the intern, hell I thought the wife was going to jump into the Malay of zealous discovery.
"So now do we now know or have the primary", I ask? No, claims the Oncologist #3. We'll need to do a biopsy of that lesion to 98% conclude that is the main cause. We'll have to do a CT scan, another Pet scan, a head and neck CT scan and schedule surgery to knock you out while I go in to take a biopsy of your lesion. THE SAME SHIT I JUST DId 3 WEEKS EARLIER, HAD THE RESULTS IN THEIR HANDS, BUT HAD TO HAVE AN OFFICIAL ONE FROM THEIR PEOPLE. BULLSHIT, I wanted to say. Cool, let's do it is what came out. Dr Fantastic then leaves with his minions and his nurse then shuffles me to his scheduling person. All the scans we can do tomorrow if I'm available. Sure, what's another 6 hours in a car and 8 in a hospital at this point. Make it so, Michele the schedule maven. "Then only bummer", I hate those words, " Dr Fantastic is going on vacation next week over the 4th of July and won't be able to do you're biopsy until the 12th of July". My head was nearing the point of nuclear detonation, if it went, I could take out my self and the 4 square blacks of this center with it. I be through with this but so would my wife who been a pillar. Couldn't do that to her and Erika.
3 more weeks of waiting plus the lab work to confirm. I made the dates. What else could I do.
The topper of all this Teaching Hospital crap reared its ugliest head a mere 3 hours later. The hemo oncologist chairperson to this committee was not going to be at the weekly meeting to discuss my case but had time that afternoon to meet with my wife and I to go over an attach plan for my case that she would recommend to the committee. All right, some direction! We go to her office when some snotty nosed "fellow" greets us to discuss my case. Where the fuck is the chairperson? This kid can't comfort us out of a wet paper bag, but he's trying his best Howdy Doody attitude on us. Between Kim and myself, we've at this point read more there is to neck and throat cancers and treatments than most of these interns have slept on as pillows in the med library.
We give him the benefit of being young dumb and full of himself and finally the Romanian Bull marches in. She tells us that in my case there is nothing she would offer to us as far a alternative chemo or radiation treatments and that in her opinion, all processes involved with chemo and radiation would need to take place in Winston Salem at the WFB Hospital. We asked about alternative or holistic treatment routes and she just blew us off with a "you do not know vat you are taking about" Ivory Tower Post Education attitude that would have stripped rust of a 56 Chevy just from her glair.
Kim and I are completely distraught on her leaving. We grabbed what was left of our self respect and
what we new existed and proceeded back up the mountain to make some very hard decisions.
After the weekend, I start again. Monday morning go back to Oncologist #1 for a post consultation on the ENT's findings, and as we all have read about him, there doesn't seem to be any further information to assist us. Da! That comment cost me $50+$250. However, Dr O#1 gets me squeezed in with his partner, who is the radiologist of the team, of couse into her very busy schedule. That $250 was worth something. Drive home, Tuesday Drive back. Get to meet Dr O#2, lets just call her "Taz". She is 4'8" of steaming locomotive power, takes no prisoners, and even her nursing staff stay at arms length in case Taz gets mad. The original Tazmanian Devil ain't got nothing on this spitfire. See comes in to the office, barely looks at my ongoing report, whips the exam door wide open and screams down the hall to her nurse to get her a trake kit (the sex toy at the ENT's office. )
Excellent, female doctor, I may get little behind closed doors somethin somethin with her sex toy flailing about.
I got a lillte somethin' all right. She proceeds, (unlike the ENTs high pressure hose), to numb my sinuses for insertion. However, she's got what looks like a Chanel #5 atomizing bottle and proceeds to daintily poof up a couple of "PooFs" into my nose. See runs away momentarily to retrieve some other implement of torture I am sure and I look at the nurse and claim "that's all the numbing stuff"?
Seems to be a bit lacking in the numbing part but high points for patient consideration. Nursey just shrugs her shoulders as Taz reenters with full hazmat mask and apron and tells me to lean on back.
So I close my eyes and lean back into the exam chair to get a little comfortable and like a freakin rattlesnake, she on me with the sex toy. I open my eyes and this little she devil has climb up almost into my lap and ramming that sex toy down my semi-numbed throat and nasals. She's down in there grinding around like the Rotor Router Guy trying to find grandmas panties she accidental flushed down the John. Finally she stops, tells everyone in the room to look the down the scope (little tough from my point of view), and exclaims we have a possible winner!! I do believe you have a lesion located on the back of your left tongue / left tonsil. Tax climbs back down to floor lever quite proud of her finding. I am actually rather excited myself, 'that means we can begin to proceedings for treatment", I ask. No she claims, but his is a good start. I really think you need to go off the mountain down to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center for a better second opinion and perhaps a biopsy of whats in your throat to positively confirm the Squamous Carcinoma in your neck.
You know the sound of air exiting a balloon, that was the sound my soul made at that point. We got the bad guy trapped, lets round him up and hang him high at noon so the town folk can get back to life!
It was not to be. Taz had Nurse Ratchet call down to WFB Cancer Center and get me an appointment 2 days later. OK, two days isn't bad. When they gonna do, look at all my test results and make conclusion for treatment and away we go. Taz even thinks she's got a in with WFB that I could be doing my daily Radiation treatment with her only 15 minute from my house. Things are looking up.
She also tels me that WFB is very highly rated teaching cancer center in the east coast and that they work on a team basis. Sort of like House, once a week these doctors and fellows and interns all meet to discuss each individual case to come up with the best treatment for the patient. Totally makes sense, more heads are better than one in this oh so exacting science of modern cancer treatment. I'm getting excited again that the end could be near. My appointments in 5 days, June 20th with a Surgical Oncologist. It's been nearly a month since the discovery of the fine needle aspiration lymph node carcinoma but awe are so close I can feel the radiation beams.
WFB hospital in in Winston Salem, NC. A good 1.5 hour drive from my house. And of course my appointment is scheduled at 8am. Happy Happy Joy Joy.
So we get there, big shiny new glass and brick medical complex and proceed to find the Oncology section of the hospital up on it's own floor. 25minute later. We enter the onology holding reception area , and there are no less than 25 "stalls by no other better word" of greeters and insurance card copiers. Take a number, when you get called, go to your stall, and become admitted to the fold. 30 minutes later, no call. So I proceed up to one of the empty stalls to inquire what was taking so long in my case since the little sign on this person desk read,"If you haven't been served in 15 minutes, Please step forward". I stepped forward.
I was informed that there was a scheduling foo pah with one of the doctors and that would it be alright to "bend" the schedule around a tad. I informed my coral master that I had driven 2 hours to get here and was not please we had a little foo pah. She told me that everything would work out and to just have a seat and a nurse will come for you to get you vitals shortly. 45 minutes later. 265 lbs Nurse Kaneesha waddles out and calls my name. Confidence looms at the sight of over weight health care workers. I Never got that. You'd think doctors and nurses would be in great shape, not looking like they just slammed a box of Krespie Kreems! She takes me back to get my vitals, bp, weight, height and then plops me off into an small exam room, very tastefully decorated out in wood grain finishes and all the newest medical gadgetry you can put into an exam room, and proceeds to tell me the doctor will be in shortly.
There's also and brand spankin new tracyotomy sex toy waiting along one of the side walls. Oh Goodie! I get to be scoped again for the 3rd time in 3 weeks. I'll be able to light up my stomach next time a stick a flashlight to my nose, like a Purple Teletuby!
There's a very unsettling feeling one gets when doctors say certain things. Life or death flashes, painful examination possibilities. This could go on and on as far as the human psyche allows it to.
However, today. It began as oddly as I have ever encountered a medical professional. This gentlemen,
a freakin Oncology Surgeon, years of service and studies, trained with the best in table side manners and tact, walks into my exam room and the first thing out of his mouth, not hello or courteous pleasantries, He claims " Mr Grindrod, you are a very interesting man, a very interesting man indeed"!
Holly crap, what the hell does that mean? Not even a hello, how's it going, thanks for coming to see us here at WFB.
And then proceeded to introduce his nurse, hi assistance, his fellow, and his intern. I get it, it's a teaching hospital and I'm the floor show.
So he says he's seen my charts and graphs but still isn't convinced about the primary. He's getting out the sex toy!!!! Thank God his nurse filled me up with enough Novocaine powder to hold a 1 hour group session. In he went and slid around until "voile!" I have found it" He proclaims, 'Look every one look" There it is" "Please grab the scope and look for your self." So everybody in the room, the nurse, the fellow, the intern, hell I thought the wife was going to jump into the Malay of zealous discovery.
"So now do we now know or have the primary", I ask? No, claims the Oncologist #3. We'll need to do a biopsy of that lesion to 98% conclude that is the main cause. We'll have to do a CT scan, another Pet scan, a head and neck CT scan and schedule surgery to knock you out while I go in to take a biopsy of your lesion. THE SAME SHIT I JUST DId 3 WEEKS EARLIER, HAD THE RESULTS IN THEIR HANDS, BUT HAD TO HAVE AN OFFICIAL ONE FROM THEIR PEOPLE. BULLSHIT, I wanted to say. Cool, let's do it is what came out. Dr Fantastic then leaves with his minions and his nurse then shuffles me to his scheduling person. All the scans we can do tomorrow if I'm available. Sure, what's another 6 hours in a car and 8 in a hospital at this point. Make it so, Michele the schedule maven. "Then only bummer", I hate those words, " Dr Fantastic is going on vacation next week over the 4th of July and won't be able to do you're biopsy until the 12th of July". My head was nearing the point of nuclear detonation, if it went, I could take out my self and the 4 square blacks of this center with it. I be through with this but so would my wife who been a pillar. Couldn't do that to her and Erika.
3 more weeks of waiting plus the lab work to confirm. I made the dates. What else could I do.
The topper of all this Teaching Hospital crap reared its ugliest head a mere 3 hours later. The hemo oncologist chairperson to this committee was not going to be at the weekly meeting to discuss my case but had time that afternoon to meet with my wife and I to go over an attach plan for my case that she would recommend to the committee. All right, some direction! We go to her office when some snotty nosed "fellow" greets us to discuss my case. Where the fuck is the chairperson? This kid can't comfort us out of a wet paper bag, but he's trying his best Howdy Doody attitude on us. Between Kim and myself, we've at this point read more there is to neck and throat cancers and treatments than most of these interns have slept on as pillows in the med library.
We give him the benefit of being young dumb and full of himself and finally the Romanian Bull marches in. She tells us that in my case there is nothing she would offer to us as far a alternative chemo or radiation treatments and that in her opinion, all processes involved with chemo and radiation would need to take place in Winston Salem at the WFB Hospital. We asked about alternative or holistic treatment routes and she just blew us off with a "you do not know vat you are taking about" Ivory Tower Post Education attitude that would have stripped rust of a 56 Chevy just from her glair.
Kim and I are completely distraught on her leaving. We grabbed what was left of our self respect and
what we new existed and proceeded back up the mountain to make some very hard decisions.
This font was so hard to read that I copy/pasted this post into MS Word so I could blow it up. Well worth the time! Now I know that Jay is not only alive, but fighting and his sense of humor is intact.
ReplyDeleteForget about having insurance folks, Jay and Kim's saga is really about can you get effective treatment (big sigh).
Friends need to read this whole, thoughtful and detailed post. For the lurkers, I offer this "keyword list" to entice you:
Tazmanian Devil, Sex Toy, Teletubby, Hazmat Mask, Floor Show, Hang it at high noon, foo pah, nurse natchet, sex toy (a frequent keyword).
Jay, I love your stream of consciousness blog. With it we know you en route to annihilating the cancer.
Thanks Mary, Love your keyword list. and your are correct, these ramblings aren't just about me. I'm also trying to just open eyes how poorly our medical system is and a little debunking of the attitude in the US medical field "it's a teaching hospital, that's about the best it gets because you have like 20-30 folks comparing notes on just your case" I appreciate you continue to read. Thought this was going to turn into a documentation for me for the future to go back and reflect on all the good times these past 4 months have been!
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