When $93,000 Only Buys You 4 Months to Live…

sighhh the diagnosis is often a bit too late anyway.. no proof this will really work on every man either.

I guarantee you that some doctor will talk some poor patient into getting something like this. But I hope the patients do their homework because just because the FDA approves it does not mean your insurance is going to pay for it. And most people would not want to leave their family with a $93,000 bill after they die for only 4 months of life. But who can say? I have seen doctors talk patients who are actively dying into additional rounds of chemo when they have to know that there is no way at all that the patient will get any benefit. This is why in our society people have so many unrealistic expectations of health care. I have a man on my unit right now who has brain cancer who developed a huge bleed into his head. He is going to die. Even if you took him to surgery and tried to evacuate the blood, the damage is done. I had a long talk with his family explaining what to expect as he was dying. But other family members showed up from out of town and wanted to know when they could expect that he would be getting up and walking again? He could not walk before he got to the hospital. He is not going to walk now.

I occasionally see an elderly man with prostate cancer and most of the time they die from something else. Some of these patients are so sick from other things that their prostate cancer is the least of their problems.

I have had family members die of cancer and I know how hard it is. But at some point we have to say enough is enough and let go. We have to decide what is comfortable for the PATIENT not for ourselves. We are selfish. We don't want to let go. But I am not keeping a family member alive that cannot have some quality of life and I hope my family will show me the same respect. When I get to the point, for what ever reason that I cannot care for myself and make my own decisions I want to be placed on hospice care and be allowed to die. I do not EVER want a feeding tube of any type and I will not be placed on a respirator. If I am in an accident and I don't wake up within a week, I want to be allowed to die. If I break my neck, allow me to die. This is my personal choice and may certainly not be the same for everyone else. But being in health care has taught me a lot over the last 32 years and I am not going to suffer through what I have seen so many other people suffer through. And as a warning to any SOB who decides otherwise, I will come back to haunt then in the afterlife.

But it's what you DO with those 4 months that really matters.