Cancer Support

rather than less than 1 mile.

My first team had issues with timely, accurate communication. I gave them a warning, making it clear that dealing with the uncertainty of cancer was all I could manage - that I could not tolerate communications from their office being unpredictable.

(They didn't send the letter telling me I needed a follow-up mammogram after my screening one, blamed me for losing it, promised to resend it - then called back to the wrong number 5 minutes later in a panic because they hadn't bothered to check when I was on the phone and realized that I urgently needed a follow-up {now 2 weeks later than they should have told me of the need}, scheduled the appointment for Tuesday, called Tuesday to confirm my Wednesday appointment, then asked why they had not yet received my doctor's referral {they self-referred from the screening mammogram to the diagnostic mammogram, and hadn't bothered to inform me that they (not my insurance company) needed an additional referral from an out-of-system doctor . . . and on, and on, and on.)

After about double that number of similar untimely or inaccurate communications, I fired them. That meant that for radiation treatment, I had a 78 mile round trip every day for 17 days. (The surgery was a 100 mile round trip, but they had an outpatient facility a tad closer for radiation.) It was worth it.

I would have expected to have to travel in my home state of Nebraska (my mother traveled 100 miles for her first mastectomy). Now that I live in a more urban area, the need was a surprise - but definitely needed from a confidence in my medical care team perspective.