I hate Anthem Health Care!

I'm going to moan for a second -

Chemo sucks! I have horrible side effects! I hate my insurance company! Suck suck suck! Hate hate hate!

Pacificare insurance, which I had when I was originally diagnosed, covers cancer treatment. All of it. Fully covered. No co-pay, no nothing. Chemo was covered, surgery was covered. Pacificare, you rock - or at least then you did.

Then I was hired by Caltrans, and switched to Blue Cross Blue Shield. In order to keep my same group docs, I had to get the PPO - the most expensive health care option - large deductible, etc. Paid out the nose for premiums, payed the deductible, payed the max out of pocket - for four years running, so far. But at least I got all the care my docs recommended.

Now a few months ago, Blue Cross became Anthem Blue Cross - and for the first time drugs and procedures recommended by my doctors have been denied. One of them is an anti-nausea drug that was working really well. "The nausea should be controlled by a more cost-efficient alternative." Well, it isn't, you bastards, and if my appeal doesn't overturn that decision, both Kevin and I are going to get mean. Quickly. We'll see how this appeal process works - WATCH THIS SPACE.

I don't think whoever made this decision has any concept of what weekly chemotherapy is like. "Moderate" nausea? No, that's car sickness. Try severe. Or maybe extreme. Well controlled by the drug which I WAS getting, NOT so well controlled by the "more cost-efficient" alternative. What in the hell are you people thinking?

I trust the decision will be overturned. Otherwise I'm going to start a big tantrum. Big. With reporters. And my union. And nasty letters from all of you.

/end rant

Other than that, I'm not sure if I'm really in the home stretch now, or not. I have a CT scan this week, and HOPEFULLY all those lymph nodes are getting smaller - and if they are, I might do an extra round (three more, taking me into march) or two (six more, going to April) of the same chemo, in the hopes of knocking the cancer out more completely. It would be easier to know that I just have the remaining three, but if it's really working seems like it's worth putting up with the additional chemo. (It'll take 3-5 days after the CT to get the results, so I probably won't know the details until a week from Thursday...) I think I can tolerate six more, not sure about nine more. I think the thing I hate about it the most is how it eats my life - three days mostly sick and with no energy to do anything, and then two or three days of being sort of my normal self - but it gets shorter every week. And last week I had a sinus infection, so I was basically out of commission for 10 days. I feel as though I lost a year the first time around. This time I think (I hope) I will recover faster, but still, I don't feel like I've really gotten to live my life since October.

"Moderate" nausea. Ha ha ha.