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Time between chemo and radiation
Hello all,
My mom has gone through 13 sessions of Folfirinox and was found to have had a complete metabolic response. We went to Mayo a little under a month ago to explore surgical options, but due to the extent of arterial involvement, my mom was deemed inoperable. Mayo recommended that she start radiation along with chemo pills.
To be close to family and friends, my mom opted to have radiation locally. It's been almost 4 weeks since her last chemo treatment and we still have not had a date scheduled for her first radiation session due to insurance delays. Though there did not seem to be any cancer activity in her body 3 weeks ago when she was at Mayo, I am worried about this delay in treatment. Ideally she would start next week at the latest, but what if she has to wait another week? How long of a wait is okay?
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Have you called the insurance company to bug them about why the delay. The doctors are advocating I am sure, but you as the patient might be able to help things along by bugging them. The doctors should be able to tell you the risks you face with delays. This should help you when you contact your insurance company. If it does pose a risk to you, you do have recourse, the state you live in (I live in NY) has a state insurance department. I had difficulty with an insurance issue with a family member and finally got it resolved with a contact to the state insurance department.
Apparently because my mom’s team wants her to do IMRT, they have to thoroughly evaluate why my mom needs that treatment. Ridiculous, right? Our physicians submitted a comparison plan yesterday, so we will be calling the insurance company today and get them to approve it no later than this week. I cannot believe they’d let patients with freaking cancer wait this long.
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1 ReactionNot easy. You are not dealing with doctors, just insurance bureaucrats to start with. It will get to a medical review at some point. Keep up with your advocacy. Good luck.
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1 ReactionFolks at the insurance company just talked to our radiation oncologist. We should have approval either by this afternoon or tomorrow. We need to start radiation ASAP.
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4 ReactionsGreat to hear that you got past the insurance issues in a timely way!!!!!! Hope the treatment goes well. Helpful if you could share the experience of radiation treatment as that could be recommended for me and I would like to know more about how this treatment goes for people.
Oh I definitely will! Mayo recommended IMRT over SBRT to try to avoid damaging nearby tissue as much as possible. There’s light at the end of the tunnel for us once this is all done—I am taking my mom to Europe in mid May for two weeks. Trying to let her live her life without thinking about her illness just once since her diagnosis!
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2 Reactions@whilted, checking in. Did your mom start radiation? How is it going?
Hi Colleen! My mom’s going into her second week of radiation + chemo pills. Things are going well so far. No fatigue or loss of appetite. Hoping she keeps feeling great! I postponed our trip by two weeks so she can have 4 weeks to rest after her last treatment.
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