99. Chemo Money Talks

During my treatment for colon cancer, the subject of money would come up now and again.  For example: every time I went, the pharmacy would wait to make my chemo batch till I got at the clinic in case I , or any other patient for that matter, would not show up and the drug treatment would be wasted, because each dose gets tailored to the patient's needs.  When  quizzing the staff about it, the response would be:  "Oh!  The treatment is soo expensive!"  The same thing went for the CEA (carcinoembryonic antigen) blood test: "Oh! It is soo expensive!"  Being a curious person I asked the  pharmacist what the cost of my treatment (Folfox) was.  She looked it up and said: $200,00.  Mind you that was just for the chemo drugs alone, not including the chair time at the clinic, the nursing staff, the oncology appointments, the anti-nausea drugs, etc.  That would also add up of course.  But as far as the cancer drugs themselves were concerned, due to having been around for several decades, mine was one of the cheapest treatments by far.  Some newer immunotherapies cost tens of thousands of dollars per treatment.  Even so, with mine being the more reasonable one, you have to also consider that I had 12 treatments in all.  So everything times 12.  Lucky for us, our Canadian health care system pays for it all!  I hate to think about what would happen, if we did not have the coverage that we have, like a lot of people in the U.S. for instance, or worse yet, no treatment available at all like in some parts of the world.  Yikes!  "Fortunate" cancer patients that we are!!  😏