I saw this first hand walking with my wife through two years of intensive cancer treatment. It seemed impossible to break through the ‘not standard of care’ wall to even incorporate low risk adjuvant therapies.
Overall it just felt like she was a hot potato and nobody wanted to put their name on *anything* outside of protocol. Even blood work. She was treated at the James Cancer Center in Ohio and we got second opinions from Cleveland Clinic and MD Anderson in New York. These are all fairly well regarded institutions in cancer treatment. I was expecting strong opinions and got hand waving and reluctance to interfere with any treatment selected by her primary oncologist. In the process of all of this i read hundreds of studies and research papers, spoke with numerous PIs, trial coordinators and industry reps. I couldn’t get any traction for anything and came away feeling a bit hopeless.
After it was all over i started making public offers of $25k as a starting point to just review her case from end to end to assess the quality of her care and determine if anything could be learned from it. The only takers I got for that were lawyers who were hoping to twist it into malpractice case, which I wasn’t interested in.
The experience left me extremely bitter about the current state of healthcare. After a while i was able to develop some empathy for the providers. They’re trapped in a system that mortgages their future with student loans and directly threatens their ability to cover with litigation and insurance. They have to stay on the rails or risk financial ruin.
Overall it just felt like she was a hot potato and nobody wanted to put their name on *anything* outside of protocol. Even blood work. She was treated at the James Cancer Center in Ohio and we got second opinions from Cleveland Clinic and MD Anderson in New York. These are all fairly well regarded institutions in cancer treatment. I was expecting strong opinions and got hand waving and reluctance to interfere with any treatment selected by her primary oncologist. In the process of all of this i read hundreds of studies and research papers, spoke with numerous PIs, trial coordinators and industry reps. I couldn’t get any traction for anything and came away feeling a bit hopeless.
After it was all over i started making public offers of $25k as a starting point to just review her case from end to end to assess the quality of her care and determine if anything could be learned from it. The only takers I got for that were lawyers who were hoping to twist it into malpractice case, which I wasn’t interested in.
The experience left me extremely bitter about the current state of healthcare. After a while i was able to develop some empathy for the providers. They’re trapped in a system that mortgages their future with student loans and directly threatens their ability to cover with litigation and insurance. They have to stay on the rails or risk financial ruin.