My current chemo regimen involves sitting in the infusion room for 4-5 hours, which is a fair chunk of time. Most of this time is taken up in simply waiting for my medication to be prepared.
The reason it takes so long is because they will not start preparing the medication until I'm actually sitting in the infusion room. And the reason they will not start preparing my medication when I get to the waiting room, or when I get my blood drawn for labs, or when I see my oncologist (I try to do these things on the same day I do my chemo infusions, so that I only waste one day per week in sitting around the oncology clinic) is because each chemo round costs thousands of dollars.
So if my labs came back saying that my blood count was too low to get my chemo, for instance, we wouldn't have wasted several thousand dollars worth of medication.
The reason I mention this is because for many under- or un-insured patients, this medication is out of reach. As are many of the chemo drugs and other potentially lifesaving treatments that their doctors might otherwise prescribe.
What can these people do?
Well, the wonderful people at Good Days have a Chronic Disease Fund which can help make up the difference between what private insurance and/or Medicare pays for and what the doctor orders. And they pay the doctors and pharmacies directly, so that most patients don't have to deal with continuous piles of paperwork.
They don't just cover breast cancer, either. They cover an entire list of devastating illnesses that not only affect people's physical lives, but also their financial lives.
It's a good place to donate money if you want it to go to help patients directly. You could quite literally help to save someone's life. That's a pretty good deal.
And it's a good place to go if you are a patient who needs help.
1 comment:
What a great organisation. Hug xx
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