If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to navigate the American healthcare system while quitting smoking and battling cancer scares, let me give you the backstage tour—spoiler alert: it’s a maze with paperwork instead of walls.
Lately, it feels like I’ve been seeing every doctor in Southern California. A dozen specialists, multiple tests, and almost all of them for one terrifying reason: cancer. Today my primary doctor finally explained why I’m on this statewide medical road trip. Apparently, nurse practitioners like to refer the difficult cases out—way out—to specialists. And let me tell you, mom and I have been racking up the miles making sure I see every one of them.
But the real boss battle isn’t the doctors—it’s the insurance companies.
Somehow, I have Medicare, which pays for an HMO for psychiatric treatment, which is also linked to two other insurance companies, plus CalOptima, all for medical expenses. It's like having four roommates who all argue over whose turn it is to pay the electric bill. Meanwhile, I’m stuck waiting for approval for X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs, surgeries—you name it. The clearance process takes forever. I swear I could die waiting for one insurance to tell another insurance that they’re the one footing the bill.
Then there’s Medical, which covers my medications. Helpful, yes—but my clinic prescribes a new medication every time someone sneezes in the hallway. I’m up to fourteen or fifteen different meds at this point. They just keep piling up like a pharmacy Jenga tower.
So far, they’ve found cancer in my thyroid. Possibly in my prostate. And now they’re looking at my lungs. That’s the part that hits me the hardest. Lungs. After smoking for decades. It’s scary. Really scary.
But everyone—from doctors to friends to the kind people reading this—keeps telling me the same thing: stay calm, stay positive. And the truth is, I already made the most important move I could make.
I quit smoking.
Whatever comes next, I did the right thing. The hard thing. The life-saving thing.
And even though I’m juggling doctors, tests, prescriptions, and enough insurance paperwork to wallpaper the house, I remind myself of one thing:
I got this.
by Dan and Bonkers
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