E-Mail From a Cancer Nurse

I received this e-mail from Juanita McKenzie of Corona, California:

Below is a copy of an e-mail I received today from my best friend. Her name is Dona Freed, she works for Pacific Cancer Medical Center, Inc. in Anaheim, Calif. It is a cancer and hematology treatment center.

Dona is very dedicated and knows all of her patients by their first names. Dona is on the front line everyday with her patients as they fight the cancers that threaten their very lives. It's an emotional and stressful job which she goes to each morning. But she wouldn't have it any other way. She loves her job, actually she loves the patients she works with. For her to experience first hand how these cuts in medical funding are affecting the real people of this country--it breaks my heart to say the least.

I think her words are best describing the situation she sees everyday. How can this be fixed? What do we, as voting citizens of this country, do to get this vital funding back where it is desperately needed? Do we have to wait until George Bush is out of office? Your input and advice is greatly needed in this issue. Dona's e-mail begins after the asterisks.

** It is so heartbreaking, we have had to send patients home without their treatment because of the cuts. It makes me sick inside that here in America somebody that has worked their whole life and paid taxes into Medicare that Medicare will not continue to cover their treatment. Not only is this denying their actual right to live but it is letting the government choose when their life will end.

This shit has gotten so out of hand, Juanita, it's like the devil himself is cutting off any hope or chance for recovery. The medical field and its advances, hell, almost every surgical procedure is "out patient" now. You name it and somehow it can be fixed or transplanted. But if you have cancer and there are eight patients in need of IVGG, four will get it. The other four have to hope that one of the first four don't need it any more or worse. We are allowed to give X amount of patients an IVGG treatment in one month.

How do you pick? How can this really be happening ? Millions of dollars in cuts have caused this.
I have written everyone, please help. Dona**

Comments

[Fran]

Barack Obama was here last week and soon the state will be full of people wanting to be President. Health care questions will be top and center. One day our local paper told of some city workers who will retire with free lifetime health care insurance. The next day the paper ran a story of an underinsured 27 year old with breast cancer. She is raising money through www.apennyforjenny. Is it me or is something dreadly wrong here. $4K neulasta shots? It is wonderful you have managed to hold onto health care. I would like to be as lucky, but am thinking I better be speaking up....I am glad I found your blog. Do you read Leroy's blog at NPR?
peace.
Fran in NH