I’m still trying to transfer my cancer care to Albuquerque

My cancer surgery in Boston was on February 28. We were supposed to get the all-important pathology report by March 9, but because of the coronavirus nothing is working smoothly anymore. We eventually got a verbal report on March 13, and the actual digital copy of the report on March 16. I immediately, within 5 minutes of getting it, emailed my records to my primary care doctor in Albuquerque requesting a referral to an oncologist.

Nothing happened. A few days later we got concerned and started calling every doctor we knew in Albuquerque – John’s primary care doctor, the guy who did my colonoscopy, etc., and we also directly called one of the main cancer centers. Finally, just this Monday (March 23), a nurse from the cancer center calls us and asks for our records, which I sent within 5 minutes of getting off the call. She told us that the doctor would call yesterday, so we monitored my cell phone the whole day. No call.

Then this morning the cancer center called again, and the medical assistant calling thought she had my pathology report – but all she had was the pathology report from the colonoscopy back in January, which apparently the colonoscopy doctor had sent in. She did not have the one from my surgery – she didn’t even know I had surgery! I had sent all the records, but apparently the nurse from Monday hadn’t actually managed to get them into my file or to the doctor.

So 5 minutes after that call, I sent the medical assistant my records. Now, supposedly, a doctor is going to call me tomorrow. We shall see. I’ve been frantically sending my records to everyone who is willing to give me an email. Please just give my records to a doctor – any doctor!

It looks like I’m being assigned to a doctor I actually saw once before. When I first got a low white blood cell count, I was sent to see a hematologist at the cancer center. At the time, we thought I might have lupus, which runs in the family. But then I had the colonoscopy and you know the story. Anyway, turns out the hematologist is also an oncologist. She doesn’t specialize in my exact type of cancer, but I think prescribing chemo is pretty straight forward. Right now I will take whatever doctor I can get.

Meanwhile, because of the coronavirus, I am officially in 2-week quarantine because I was traveling from out of state, and only got home on Saturday. So they won’t schedule an office visit, which is fine with me, I don’t want to go in anyway. Except I need chemo.

Here’s my hope – what I would really love to have happen is the doctor prescribe chemo in pill form. Usually chemo is done intravenously via an IV or a port. But sometimes it can be administered in pill form. If someone would just send me chemo pills, I would be set! I don’t even know if that’s an option for my type of cancer. But I would very much like to stay home and not be going in for a port and/or IVs.

Of course I’m still going to have all the horrible side effects of chemo either way. Chemo is a poison – it targets fast-growing cells. So it kills cancer cells, and unfortunately also kills other normal, needed, fast-growing cells in the body. So the pills wouldn’t be any less miserable, but at least I could be miserable at home.