Why does it have to be so Difficult finding the Right Colon Cancer Treatments?

Five years ago my friend Mona was just about the happiest person you ever met; s he had a dream marriage, and her first baby was on its way. Right after her baby was born, and she was wheeled to the gynecologist's clinic for a routine postna tal checkup, they found that the difficulty she had had with labor and the stabs of pain she had felt, were not normal as they had thought they were. After a ba ttery of tests, they came out with a pronouncement that shook all of our lives she had colon cancer. She reacted to this much better than any of the rest of u s did. She had an inspirational faith in God and felt that the very fact that sh e had just been given a child meant that she was marked to live, not death. With this truly uplifting faith, she took in doctor after doctor, asking about all t he colon cancer treatments that were available. To begin with, they didn't think she would make it through the year - her cancer had spread to her liver; one do ctor said that he could try chemotherapy to perhaps extend her life by another y ear. Another doctor said that surgery would probably give her a few years more m onths. As she struggled with the system, trying to find the best way to learn of the co lon cancer treatments that would work, she came upon a stubborn fact about survi ving cancer - as many world leading experts as there are in this country, each o ne a true experimen in his specialty, there is no one place you can go to that w ill give you all the information you need. If you have a surgeon who specialize s in cancer-related surgery, he'll know everything there is about surgery, but h e won't really know much about oncology. There are some people who feel that can cer is a kind of overhyped disease. They feel that the magazines and movies are far too cancer-aware, and neglect other equally important diseases. But the fact s speak for themselves - more than half a million people will die this year from cancer in America. That's the second worst killer disease there is out there, n ext only to heart disease. All the attention has really contributed in a meaning ful way though - every year for the last 15 years, fewer and fewer people have d ied of cancer. The Institute of Medicine, a government body, admits that the quality of care yo u will receive at various hospitals around the country is shockingly uneven. Som e hospitals will give you the best care in the world with the greatest colon can cer treatments ever invented. Some will give you treatment that is on par with T hird World hospital care. So now, the National Quality Forum is trying something new - for the breast and colon cancer treatments that you seek, there will be q uality standards established that can help you tell which hospital is best. The most basic colon cancer treatments and tests are skipped sometimes at hospit als. For instance, if it is suspected that you have colon cancer that has spread to the lymph nodes, doctors absolutely have to offer you the option of chemothe rapy. The standards will fail a hospital that neglects to offer this course of t reatment. My friend's healthcare plan didn't allow for aggressive treatment - it only allo wed palliative treatment, which meant that they paid for colon cancer treatments like chemotherapy that would help with her pain, but they wouldn't pay to try t o cure her. She quit her healthcare provider and switched to another she got wit h a new job she got. She went to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. The doctor th ere was an expert who had about two dozen colon cancer treatment options for her , to go with one after the other. She didn't find the doctor easily; she went fr om one doctor to the other for about two months, and this final hospital was per haps her eighth. There are times when doctors don't offer colon cancer treatment options even whe n they know of them. There are all kinds of reasons why. Sometimes, it is becaus e they feel that the patient doesn't have the right kind of insurance or the rig

ht kind of money. Sometimes, the race of the patient somehow comes into play. Bl ack and Hispanic patients are not offered the kind of treatments white patients are. In the end, my friend got surgery done. She is still alive today, and it al l goes to her tenacious search for the right doctor.