A year ago I started asking Mom’s doctors to find out why her abdomen was getting so big. “Will you please order a scan?” I asked her oncologist at her 1 year check up after her mastectomy.
“For what purpose?” he said. “You’re not going to put her through surgery if we do find something.”
In the next several months, I asked 2 other doctors to check on her tummy. No one wanted to touch her. Finally, I got someone to listen to me, and she ordered an ultrasound. The doctor called as soon as we arrived home from having the imaging. She told me that Mom had a “mass” the size of a football in her abdomen, and it looked “nefarious.” Several weeks later Mom had a CT-scan and three different doctors said that a woman her age (90 years old) was definitely not a candidate for surgery. We decided to put Mom on hospice.
What would have happened if the first doctor I asked about Mom’s big tummy would have checked for a tumor a year ago? Would we have pushed for surgery? She made it through a mastectomy at the age of 88 like a champ. The tumor would have been much smaller and manageable, right? Maybe it’s a mercy that we didn’t have a diagnosis earlier. It was hard enough to get Mom’s HMO to consent to the mastectomy even though she had a very aggressive form of breast cancer. “She’s worth saving!” I cried out of frustration to a friend when I described the “hands off” attitude of all the medical personnel in Mom’s HMO. My husband and I have the same HMO. At what age do they start deciding that one’s life is not valuable? I’m 58 and Mark is 62. How much longer do we have before they start shoving a DNR form in our faces every time we go to the doctor?
Please excuse me if I sound a little cynical.
Surviving the Sandwich 