Category: Uncategorized
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The Price of New Cancer Drugs Is Nuts
If your reference point is, like mine was, Claritin and a cheap antidepressant, the cost of drugs like Neulasta and Zoladex is a bit of a shock. But what’s truly amazing is that in Cancerland these drugs—billed at $60,000 a treatment course and $26,000 a year, respectively—aren’t even notably expensive. Prices can go much, much…
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Zoladex, or How to Extend a Patent for 45 Years
Yesterday I wrote about Neulasta, the chemo immune support drug billed at $15,000 a pop. But Neulasta is prescribed for a limited period. Today I want to dig into a drug that is taken for a much longer time: Zoladex. If you have hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer, which 80% of breast cancer patients do, part of…
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The High Cost of Neulasta
Each of the four times I received chemotherapy, the hospital billed my insurance more than $19,000. This covered several drugs, the process of infusion, and things like saline solution. (Hospital billed at $213, insurance paid $3.95.) Three-quarters of the price was from a single drug: Neulasta. Each round, the hospital charged $14,930 for “INJECTION, PEGFILGRASTIM…
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$320,301.48
Last week I wrote about feeling gaslighted by the system. More recently I’m feeling a fresh wave of rage at the difficulty of trying to get meaningful care. A message to my PCP’s office about symptoms getting worse was returned with the helpful message, Have you considered that you might have COVID? We think you…
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Medical Gaslighting
One reason I’m finding it hard to move past The Cancer Experience™ is that I am still having significant physical symptoms. Moreover, when I had (different) symptoms in the summer, they turned out to be from a specific cause (suspicious thyroid nodule) that led to surgery. So I am now hyperattuned to my body, and…
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There Is No All Clear
In my imagination of cancer, there were more scans. I expected that being diagnosed with cancer involved being scanned, somehow, to see if it had spread. Then at the end of treatment, after the cancer had been removed and the treatments endured, the doctors would do it again and say, “Well, there’s always a chance…
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The End of Treatment
Sometime in June, having completed surgery, chemo, and radiation, my oncologist said to me, “Congratulations! You’re done with active treatment.” This implies things are somehow over, that you can draw an unpleasant chapter of your life to a close, and—aside from the fear of recurrence, its own topic—begin to move on. For people with the…
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Why I’m here
Most people, when diagnosed with a serious illness, keep it to their friends and family, maybe their coworkers. A smaller number document their experience on social media, whether for catharsis, support, or to help others. But who writes about “after”? A year ago, I had just received confirmation that I did indeed have breast cancer.…
One Year Later 