Thanks Teresa, I'll be checking with my insurance about covering the cost of a 2nd opinion at Mayo.

As far as your other question. Prior to diagnosis I didn't see health insurance as a necessary expense. I was healthy so paying as I needed it saved me a lot of money.

In late 2017 I started having UTIs over and over again. By the time things started getting bad, my doctor begged me to sign up for Obamacare, but it was too late. Obamacare deadline was December 15. At the beginning of 2018, I started having severe chills and shakes that would last about 2 hours and then go away. After stalling for 6 months, my doctor finally convinced me to get a colonoscopy and the rest is history. The colonoscopy showed an obstruction inside the colon. By the time I got to a surgeon a couple months later, the tumor had grown outside the colon. When the surgeon removed the tumor it weighed about 3 lbs and had reached out an touched my bladder, small intestine, and duodenum. I lost my sigmoid section, bits and pieces of small intestine, a little bit of the duodenum, had a partial cystectomy, and woke up with a loop ileostomy. I would say that I am lucky to be alive.

The next year I got health insurance.