Bud Baker
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Posts posted by Bud Baker
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"Nick C"]
We have the BEST system in the world.
Being the quickest to overtreat makes us the best? I don't think so. We'll have to get a lot higher than 27th in life expectancy before I can consider agreeing with you.
Personally, I wasn't all that impressed with our system's responsiveness as my wife sat in an Arlington emergency room, waiting 10 hours to be seen by a doctor. It wasn't because all the other people's conditions were more serious than hers. It was because the emergency room was overfilled with uninsured people who couldn't get to see a doctor any other way. These people could receive better care at much less cost away from an emergency room, but that's where "the BEST system in the world" forces them.
In Congress, even those who don't like what's proposed don't even attempt to argue that the system doesn't need fixed. I had no clue that anyone did, but I see now that they do. It's insulting enough to me that I'll take my leave of this thread now.
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So sorry to read about the bad scans, Susan. Here's best wishes that she'll do well on the alimta.
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Happy Birthday, Tom!
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The last one I saw was the World Health Organization's rankings.
The frustrating thing is that here we are, with more than our share of the best medical schools, doctors, facilities, equipment, etc, yet we rate no better overall than 37th (just behind Costa Rica). It doesn't speak well of our system at all.
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"Nick C"]
Starting with something that is too far reaching, , takes away choice, puts our children into debt and has potential to ruin the best health care system on the plant is not the somewhere I want to start.
I guess we'll agree to disagree on that. Last studies I checked had us rated 37th on health care, in spite of the fact that we spend more money on it than any other country.
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I think the best move for us addictive types is to try to replace bad addictions with good ones.
I gave up cigarettes in 1983 when I noticed the cough they had given me, but I kept smoking cigars. My father died of a heart attack at 54, and his father died of a heart attack at 48, and I always just assumed I would have no old age.
After I passed 50 with no sign of heart trouble, I decided that I'd like to stick around a bit longer, so maybe I should be living healthier. I had also reached the point where any kind of smoke really bothered me a lot. I quit cigars cold turkey 6 years ago, and after a couple of months, never had the urge for another.
I put on weight so quickly that I ended up looking for some kind of exercise I liked and thought I could stick with, and after I bought a bicycle, I had found my good addiction.
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But if they're giving weekly infusions, they're bound to be weaker infusions than the once every three week cisplatin infusion, so that may be some of the cost difference.
My insurance has a $500 chemo drug co-pay. And my wife's second line of chemo may be 12 weekly infusions. OUCH!
It's nice to read about adjuvant chemo success (especially since I had adjuvant chemo!), but I remember reading something recently on GRACE that hinted that chemo before surgery may end up being even better.
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How did your doctor's appointment go, Barb? I hope today finds Bill still feeling well.
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Yeah, that document is pretty vague, and I'm betting the first version of the working plan in practice won't be very good. But I still think we have to start somewhere. We've already waited far too long.
I got the impression that the non-profit statement referred to institutions, not individual doctors.
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Nick, I have to admit to being passionate about this one, too, and not wanting to shut up. With my back issues, I battled insurance companies to the point that I eventually gave up and signed up for the problem riddled VA system. You'd better be a good advocate for yourself in either system. But at least the VA hasn't invented reasons not to cover me, and forced me gather doctors to help with an appeal, if I wanted treatment, like the insurance companies did.
I keep hearing all the "government run" and "socialized medicine" scare tactic phrases. The government has been a big influence and subsidizer of medicine for a long time. As bad as government can be, it doesn't scare me as much as the insurance companies. I don't think any insurance executives took the hippocratic oath, either. And anyone who doesn't have a problem trusting corporate America to handle their health care must not have been paying too much attention to the recent corporate mortage and banking industry. They won't even do what's best for themselves in the long term, much less what's best for us.
The other thing I keep hearing is about the evils of the Canadian system. The Canadians have one third per person of what we have to spend. If they had our kind of money to spend, their health care would be so much better than ours, there could be no argument. Even with all the shortcomings their money shortfall causes, life expectancy in Canada is 76.7; it's 74.9 in the US. What's wrong with this picture....
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I'm Bud, and I live in Arlington, Texas, with my wife, Rose. We have three grown children, and two grandchildren. I work full time, as a maintenance technician, repairing CNC machine shop machinery. I am still cancer free, 19 months after my lung surgery. Rose is currently battling stage III breast cancer.
For many years, my main hobby was tournament bass fishing. I still enjoy fishing, but my main hobby these days is riding a bicycle. I average 130 miles a week. I do a lot of 200k (125 to 135 mile) rides, and try to get in one or two 300k (190 to 200 mile) rides every year. I've done 200k rides each of the past three Saturdays, two of them in 100+ degree heat.
I also run the rbent (Recumbent Bike Enthusiasts of North Texas) online forum. My riding friends from that group are a great bunch, and offered a lot of encouragement when I was trying to recover from surgery and chemo to return to my long distance riding.
Lung cancer and its treatments are so debilitating that there seem to be very few survivors around who are athletes. I don't know how long I can remain one, but for now, I'm around to show people it can be done.
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Well I can't disagree that the government's best intentions don't always work, either. The last time they tackled health care was a good example. Congress couldn't agree on anything else, so they just gave employers a tax credit for providing health insurance. That's how we ended up with employer paid health insurance. In essence, the government gave up billions in tax revenue from employers to subsidize health care.
But it ended up doing a great job of hiding the cost of health care. Wages since then haven't kept up with inflation, mostly because of the rise in cost of health care insurance, but no one seemed to figure out that health care costs were affecting what wages an employer could pay. They just kept enjoying their "free" health care, and had no idea about the true cost of it. I don't think there's any way we would have let health care costs get this out of hand without doing something if most of us had any idea about the true cost.
Now, with projections that health care costs could soon be a third of the economy, the government sets out to fix it. Good luck with all that, is all I can say. And we all get to live with the consequences of whatever they do.
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Yea, well that's how scarce the private insurers will be when folks can get medical from the gov't for free.
Free? Last time I checked, even Medicare had co-pays. The VA health care I receive certainly does. I wouldn't consider a tax based system free any more than I consider the insurance at work (which undoubtedly robbed me of so many raises over the years as insurance rates kept rising) free either. One of the articles I read today astutely pointed out that one of the obstacles Obama has to overcome in selling his plan is the fact that most Americans consider their health insurance free, while we spend one sixth of the nation's economy on health care.
Any system is likely to leave some people battling and appealing for treatment when some doctor thinks it will do no good. For most of us in our current system, that means finding another doctor (hopefully one who's in your insurance company's plan so it won't bankrupt you - 60 percent of bankruptcies in this country are, after all, caused by medical bills; by the way, I'm probably about to experience that with my wife's cancer, but that's a topic for another thread). For me, with my VA health care, it's ranting and raving to the right people if I don't like the first doctor's decision. And so it might be in another government system.
Personally, I'm going to favor whatever system pays doctors a salary (like Mayo and the Cleveland Clinic do - but a salary based on how their patients do would be even better, I think), rather than paying them for how many things they can bill out, like most of our system does now. But, somehow I don't think that's how the proposed plan will work.
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Welcome, Lindy. You are right. Whatever happens, it's likely already happened to someone here. You are among people who understand. Best wishes, and keep us updated.
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Hi Cynthia. I had an upper left lobectomy in December, 2007. It is, indeed, a tough and painful surgery. But doctors pretty much agree that it gives you the best shot at a cure, and it is possible to do very well for many years after this surgery. Good luck, and keep us updated.
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It sounds like good results in spite of Tom not feeling great. Only here can we get excited about not feeling well. Good luck on the scan results!
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Best wishes for good results from this next treatment!
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Another congrats on the not smoking. I haven't been much of a soda drinker for many years, and my coffee and tea became decaf a couple of years ago.
I do allow myself the sugar and caffeine of a carbonated drink sometimes at around mile 95 of a 125 mile bike ride. The sugar and caffeine are an energy level boost at that point, and I figure, hey, I'm doing a 125 mile bike ride, one soda can't undo too much of the good from that.
I don't have an answer for the heating pad question.
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Amen to the having trouble caring about a job, Dana. Lung cancer does seem to give you some perspective adjustments. I'm trying to get to where I can retire, or at least semi-retire to something that's easier, better working conditions, and less hours than the machine shop machinery repair work that I'm doing now, 45 hours a week. But mine is a salaried position, so I lost no pay while I was off work during treatment.
I had no trouble getting back to exercise. I'm convinced that my great fitness level had a lot to do with how well I tolerated the medical horrors that lung cancer treatment is, and I got out of the hospital wanting to get back to my bike riding as soon as possible.
I was given 4 weeks off work after surgery, but I was back on the bicycle just 16 days after surgery. I only missed work a day here and there during chemo, but there were also days when I wasn't up to much physical work.
By the third round of chemo, my riding time was down to nothing, but I was riding again in less than two weeks. I did a lot more easy miles on the bike that first year after surgery and chemo than I normally would have, but I can't think of better therapy for surgery damaged lungs than riding a bike, and I really think it helped my overall recovery more than anything else I did.
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Dang, so sorry to see this, Patti. I'll be keeping you in my thoughts and rooting for you, as you battle through this.
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Did your neck hurt when you first started riding? Mine does if I recline at all when I'm driving so i was thinking I'd need a head rest.
I don't use a headrest, but many people who ride bikes with that kind of recline do. I actually did try headrests on those two bikes last year.
After my surgery, I developed asthma, especially exercise-induced asthma when I ride. I had much less of a problem with it on the two bikes I ride that have a less reclined riding position (the Stratus XP in my avatar and an EZ Tandem), and since restricted airways are a known cause of exercise-induced asthma, I thought that the extra bend of my neck on the more reclined bikes might be constricting something and making it worse, and that reclining my head more onto a headrest to make my neck straighter might help.
The headrests didn't help though, so I don't use them these days. I still don't know what brought on the asthma. Perhaps it is just scarring from the surgery.
I have had my neck bother me a little, toward the end of rides of 190 miles or more though, so if I tackle any rides very much longer than that, I may make myself use a headrest again then, at least part of the ride.
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... at least for those who haven't seen recumbent bicycles. The first photo is me on my Performer Roadster, racing in The Texas Time Trials last fall (9 months after my lobectomy). The second photo is me on my Bacchetta Corsa, which is my long distance bike, in July, 2007 (5 months before surgery).
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Our TracyD
in GRIEF
Kasey,
So sorry to see this. Condolences to you and Tracy's family.
As the Chemo Turns...
in MEMBER UPDATES
Posted
I had my 6 month CT scan on June 23rd, 18 months after my surgery, and finally today, had my follow up oncologist visit (long story). The results are........NED!
My wife had her second chemo for stage III breast cancer on Monday, and is still feeling puny (although she did go to work Wednesday, yesterday, and today). She felt bad for a week after the first round, but was back to her old self after that, had good blood work, and even did three bike rides before the second round. She doesn't seem to be feeling quite as bad after this second round, so hopefully she'll bounce back well next week.