Unfortunately. Medicine is much like eldercare. Chances are you’ll be dead at some point, so might as well extract as much cash from you before you depart. Better in my pocket than in your children’s pocket.

Yes, that was my situation. I was a critical-care patient when my cancer was discovered, and that meant that the floor resident reviewed my chart every day, the nursing station took care of scheduling tests (which happened almost instantly), the hospital pharmacist made up my prescriptions, the physio and OT visited every day, etc etc etc.

What a difference when I went home after 3½ months! I was still in a wheelchair at the time. Home care stopped by once, made sure I could manage basic self care (like getting dressed, going to the bathroom, and preparing a meal), them basically told me I was on my own because I was high functioning, and thus, very low priority. 🤷. I did convince them to train my spouse to give me my Firmagon injections, so that she didn't have to toss me and the wheelchair into the car every 28 days (I don't miss those, now that I'm on Orgovyx).

At least I'm with the Cancer Centre, so they still handle scheduling my tests, appointments, and related specialists — and they have a patient-care line staffed by oncology nurses that I can call with any questions — but it was really frightening being an out-patient at first, after getting used to 24/7 care for so long.

Chippy, I too had a private urologist who ran his office like a mother hen.
When I had called about a recent bladder biopsy, the receptionist put me on hold. Five minutes later she said “Doctor S was very pleased.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “what grade was it? Any muscle invasion?” Another long hold on the line.
“Very pleased” she said again. After that I knew that I would always be in the dark, totally at the mercy of whatever info Dr S wished to share; I would never know the whys, hows or anything: Daddy knew best, period!