I’m so angry.

How can I start?

I’m about to be a victim of the Canadian health care system.

On July 15th, after having finished radiation treatment on June 3rd, the tumor board met to read my MRI and as I mentioned before, the tumor had spread and radiation treatment really didn’t do anything.

The tumor board told me that my only option really was to have surgery.

I was referred to the most aggressive surgeon in the city. Two weeks later, I met with her.

I’m young. I’m otherwise healthy. I have a great support system and I’ve survived a very big surgery before. But in order for her to confirm, I needed another MRI.

I needed to have an exploratory procedure under anesthesia. and I needed to meet with three of the specialists that she wanted to have involved in my very extensive pelvic exenteration surgery.

So, for the last five weeks, I’ve done everything I needed to do. I got the MRI. I met with all the specialists and I had the exploratory procedure under anesthesia.

After that procedure, the surgeon said that she was 95% sure that she was going to do surgery.

This past week, I met with that surgeon again.

After she had presented me to two different tumor boards, reviewed my MRI and her exploratory procedure notes, and had spoken to multiple specialists.

These past five weeks of having to go through the system, waiting for appointments, waiting for diagnostic imaging, waiting for results and reports, my tumour has spread way too far.

And she can no longer operate.

So, on Monday, I’m going back to the hospital to get my PICC line reinserted, and on Tuesday, I start chemo all over again.

It’ll be a different chemo regimen, but I don’t know if it’s going to work.

What the surgeon has said is that she needs to at least see that my tumor has stopped growing, but ideally, we need to see the tumor regress because of how far it has spread.

I’m so angry they let me sit there for two months with no treatment.

To not give me anything, to not do anything. That seems insane. And I know that decisions are made at the time with the best information that we have available.

It shouldn’t have taken 5 weeks to get the information that we needed, but this is the system that we live in. This chemo is the last chemo option that I have.

And if it does not work, I don’t know if they’ll have anything left to do.

But I’m going to be honest, I don’t think there is.

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