SOCIAL: kaiser sf
Amandeep Jawa
deep at deeptrouble.com
Mon Sep 22 22:44:52 PDT 2008
Wow - Thanks Jessica!
For those of you who don't know, Jess just finished some serious chemo
therapy & is looking like she's on the upswing (knock knock knock) Go
Jess Go!
'deep
On Sep 22, 2008, at 6:44 PM, Jessica Tanzer Conroy wrote:
> I had the same problem with Kaiser, they misread my mammogram and
> missed the 3 centimeter tumor that I had been asking about. It took
> 7 months for me to get in to see someone else at Kaiser who
> immediately sent me to a surgeon who removed a five centimeter tumor
> which had spread to my nodes.
> I learned from my experience, that if you can't get a test from one
> doctor (my sister and I literally had a two hour screaming fight
> with my first oncologist because he wouldn't oreder an MRI), then
> change doctors. I ended up jusyt moving everything to San Rafael
> Kaiser where they are much less stressed out and have more time for
> their patients. I learned things change once you use these two
> terms "standard of care" i.e., "I do not feel I am getting the
> standard of care", and the term "medmal", i.e., "I am not
> necessarily suggesting medmal, but....". Both of those terms make
> people jump to attention (my dad's a lawyer).
>
> Also, do your own research, know what you are asking for and be
> aggressive, very aggressive. My experience started to turn for the
> better once I developed a relationship with the cancer case manager,
> otherwise known as social worker.
> Now, I never thought I would defend Kaiser but in the last year of
> my treatment, I got almost everything I asked for, most of it from
> doing my own research. At the same time I had a very close friend
> fighting cancer throough the LA County health system and they didn't
> give him the amount of chemo he needded to fight his disease. I put
> his obituary in yesterday's Chronicle. I also had another friend
> who had a rare form of cancer (of the appendix) who had Blue Cross
> insurance, because it was a rare form, any therapy was really
> considered experimental for her form of cancer. When she learned
> that it had spread to her pancreas and lungs, her doctors decided to
> try her on a kind of chemo used for colon cancer. The first day at
> the hospital, she sat, hooked up to the IV waiting for them to bring
> it in, instead, they came in and unhooked her from the IV drip and
> said Blue Cross wasn't going to pay for it because it was
> experimental. We spread her ashes
> in the Ocean in Bolinas on Saturday.
> So, before completely giving up on Kaiser, my advice is to learn
> how to work their system, find a caseworker to be your conduit, do
> your own research and be aggressive, know what you want and don't
> take no for an answer. I found the Oncologists and Surgeons in San
> Francisco to be useless and burned out and had a much, much better
> experience in San Rafael. One patient described it as "the
> Nordstrom's of Kaisers". My Oncolgist there is Dr. Krista Muirhead
> and when she wasn't sick or on vacation, she listened, was smart,
> treated me like I was smart and changed my opinion of Kaiser.
>
> There, enough said.
>
> Good luck,
> Jessica
> Oh, one more suggestion or two. Get all of your records and
> pathology and keep them, they are yours, you may need them one day.
> Also, a binder because so much information will be thrown at you at
> once, get a sleeve for business cards and lot's of notepaper and a
> three hole punch, the first month after diagnosis is very hard and
> your brain fills up fast, orginization is hard to think about but
> very helpful. And, yes, marijuana is the wonder drug for
> chemotherapy, no joke!!!!
>
> JESSICA TANZER birdmaninc.com
> http://www.jessicatanzer.com
> jessicatanzer.com/organics jessicatanzer.com/family
> http://www.jessicatanzer.com/photo/group.php?g=%2Fphoto%2Fimages%2Flimitededition
> office 415.543.3830
> cell 415.377.7126
>
>
> --- On Mon, 9/22/08, Erin Milnes <erin.milnes at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> From: Erin Milnes <erin.milnes at comcast.net>
>> Subject: SOCIAL: kaiser sf
>> To: social at deeptrouble.com
>> Date: Monday, September 22, 2008, 4:38 PM
>> I don't mean to be a huge downer, but I wanted to let
>> the group know about a
>> bad experience my friend had with kaiser sf. my friend was
>> diagnosed with
>> pancreatic cancer last year, and kaiser was very slow to
>> perform necessary
>> tests, prescribe appropriate medications, and develop a
>> treatment plan. I am
>> afraid that those couple of months might have made the
>> difference. I know
>> pancreatic cancer has a very low survival rate, but that
>> doesn't mean they
>> should have thrown up their hands.
>>
>>
>>
>> kaiser can be very good for health maintenance and simple
>> injuries, but if
>> you have a catastrophic illness and are a patient there,
>> please seek a
>> second opinion at ucsf or cal pacific. and push kaiser hard
>> to move as fast
>> as possible. they are a big bureaucracy and you have to be
>> demanding and
>> loud to get service.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Erin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Erin Milnes
>>
>> Editorial Services
>>
>>
>>
>> 2308 Ivy Drive
>>
>> Oakland, CA 94606
>>
>>
>>
>> 510 444 6768
>>
>> erin.milnes at comcast.net
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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----------------------------------
Amandeep Jawa
----------------------------------
deep AT deeptrouble DOT com
937 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94110-2320
personal: http://www.deeptrouble.com
political: http://www.sflcv.org
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