Collect Your Own Greatest Hits

When it comes to saving a life, seconds matter. When that life is your own, every moment wasted is purgatory.

There often seems to be a hurry up and sit on your butt mentality when working through the medical system. Dealing with the insurance companies can be hard enough, but just trying to get information from one doctor to another is almost impossible.

With all the money spent to develop MRI machines, remote cameras small enough to be swallowed and fancy scanners, the one thing doctors really seem to need is a clear line of communication. CT scan images are too big to e-mail I'm told, but wouldn't it be great if the images could be posted to a secure site that doctors could easily access?

That doesn't seem to be high on the list of medical advances. However, I'd gladly settle for universal healthcare that covered all my bills.

Part of the problem seems to be an overblown sense of duty and ownership that some doctors have toward their patients. Perhaps they just never learned how to share.

Forgive me while I rant for a moment, but there is a lesson to be learned here: Never leave the doctor's office without your own copy of the latest scans, reports, biopsies, whatever. Most hospitals have a lab or film library that will give patients a free CD copy of their scans the same day. It took me just 15 minutes to get a copy of my latest bone scan from Stanford. It'll be great for movie night, especially when we have a double feature with The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

As good as the medical files are at hospitals, they aren't perfect and they do get lost. At least now I'll have a backup file. 

Some of my biopsy slides were "misfiled" somewhere between Marin General Hospital, Cedars-Sinai and Stanford Medical Center. I don't know where, although I have my suspicions, but I'd rather not point fingers. Without all the slides and scan results, it becomes difficult to make an accurate diagnosis.

The ridiculous maze presented by the medical industry is enough to send any patient into a rage. One of the lead articles in the latest edition of Caring4Cancer magazine in the waiting room at Stanford discusses maintaining mental health, but nowhere does it talk about how to stay calm when the Bermuda Triangle has sucked up the latest images of my colon … along with five left socks and $8.15 in loose change.

Failing to get all the evidence gathered in one place, it would be nice to get all the doctors in one room to compare notes. I've now collected five doctors since my dance with cancer began in December. If we all sat down together, we might finally figure out how to knock out the cancer and then could play a couple hands of poker. Win a few hands and I might just be able to pay all my bills.