A little victory

    As you faithful readers know, yesterday was the day of the weird letter from the insurance company, the one that asked in bureaucrateze for more information about the reason for the referral to Dr. God at the proton therapy place.

    What I hadn't mentioned in my last post was the truly bizarre sentence in that letter, stating that P.'s case would require only a 15 minute consultation with a physician because his condition was "self limiting."

    Well, I guess if P.'s only treatment was a 15 minutes of chat time in a doctor's office, that chondrosarcoma would be limiting, all right, just not in the way we'd want.

    As for the tumor being self limiting, that's just the opposite of cancer!  A common cold is self limiting.  So, most of the time, is the flu.  But cancer cells don't know how to turn themselves off, thus the need to zap the little buggers or go after them with sharp implements or poison them with scary toxic chemicals.

    So I launched myself into the fray early this morning, showing up on the PCP's doorstep (at his clinic, not his house, for Pete's sake!).   The PCP's wonderful assistant got good and frosted about this loony insurance letter and started calling around, as did I.

    And, suddenly, I get a call back: P.'s consultation with Dr. God at the Really Famous Hospital was now approved!  Not really a party hat-worthy victory, but still.

    We know that an approved consultation isn't an approval for the actual proton beam therapy.  And we don't even know if Dr. God will take the case yet.

    But it's a step in the right direction.  Since we've been going in circles since April 27, the sense that we might be moving in a straight line forward feels pretty good right now.