Wellness

[F1wild]

On 7/13/2014 Mama Mia said:

You are lucky you got to use Interferon. It actually started in the seventies. I remember because I saw an article in a magazine when my late DH had cancer. I brought it to his oncologist who said it was very, very expensive and we couldn't get it. Being older and wiser now, I would have done a lot more research on it, and pushed it more. I am glad you got to use it, a miracle drug then.

mm

Hmm, last try didn't work!!

Interferon was thought to be the big new thing back then. They didn't even have a full list of side effects yet. They had the Mayo list then began the "Debi list".

Talk about expensive drugs - with the last go round with Melanoma I was treated with Yervoy (or "ipi"). Thank goodness I have great insurance as each drip bag of the drug costs $70K. Yes, $70,000!!! I had 4 treatments. So, $280,000 worth.

The funny part was that I had to have labs all morning and a consult, oo make sure I could handle it. My IV had to be started and a full bag of saline in me before they were allowed to order the med from the in-house pharmacy. Some of the nurses freaked when my IV blew or couldn't get started, etc. By the second treatment the nurses and I decided to breakout into cheers...like high school, really bad cheers. It was hysterical to me. In the end Yervoy and I won!!

[wagirl]

F1--wish I had a Sheldon-ism for you on that---but I don't---Holy cow--I paid way less than $280K to have my house built in 1986!!! And yes, you are so lucky to have great insurance. I have really stellar insurance too and my chemo was $20,000 for the first 4 rounds and then I had 12 more weeks but I don't recall the cost for those and then $1000 each for 33 radiation zaps. And then for all the tests and scans and for the surgery and assorted stuff---I'm sure it was well over $100K. And so funny about the things that makes us laugh at such an awful time, right!!!