vincentclark dot com

I feel I need to respond. Yet, feel the need to make it short. This will be a challenge.

Here is the short version of the last 13 years of my life. Remember, I am 35.

When I was 22 I had pain in my right testical. A lot pain. I was going to school at Chico State. Rewind a year prior I was in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona State. had something similar happen. A very *bad* It was diagnosed as epididimitis. Infection in the part of the testicil that produces your sperm or semen.

The condensed version of that story is that it made me very uncomfortable to see doctors, especially when my nuts were involved.

A year later, Chico California I started to develop the pain again. The lump was there too. Shit, not again. I went to see the nurse practitioner there, and he was a very nice guy. Though I knew it wasn’t gonera, the symptoms were there and I was given a lot of antibiotics and pain killers.

Next week pain is getting worse. Nurse Practioner gives me more antibiotics (shot) more pain killers. I told him it couldn’t be Gonera, but he told me there are other ways to get an infetion there. Back to the Epitidimitis.

Week 2 pain a lot worse. Terrible. I can’t sleep, I feel like I had been kicked in the nut and the pain never went away. Back to the clinic. Another shot of antibiotic and more pain killers and a long weekend.

Entering into the next week. Pain unbelivable. I see the doctor, he refers me to a Urologist. Shit, I was just recovering from the last prick. I had no choice.

Wednsday, pain really really bad, Uroloogist in under 5 minutes makes the diagnosis. Testicular Cancer. Now I was apparently lucky. The tumor was hemerging on the nerve center causing pain, normally TC doesn’t.

Friday Testicil removed. Due to circumstances I elected for a surgery to dig out any other tumors. One was found. Small tumor, but warrented 2 rounds of Chemo.

The fucked up thing is, TC spreads quickly. If I was properly diagnosed I would have been spared the full RPLND, in which I was litterally gutted, intestines placed outside, dug in, and removed some lymphnodes. The cancer had spread. Most likely if I would have been diagnosed correctly at the beging. The lump being slightly away from the epiditimis, thus being very obvious to someone that took a 2 hour course in diagnosing it. Very Simple.

Testicular Cancer is the most common cancer for young men between 15-35 years old. (laugh or not, but if you are in range, check your balls daily, feel a lump, go to the doctor, this is as important as Women doing breast exams)

In a college setting you would think this was something the medical people would know. They didn’t. The schools website had in depth education on breast cancer, but a horribel, hard to find on TC.

Ok, that was a little longer than expected, but the point is coming.

I had my mother’s medical insurance, the best I have ever had. The clinic at the school was free, though could have used a simple course to figure out my problem. But it still could have been more than enough to figure out my problem sooner.

The problem was not in the health care, but in the lack of knowledge of the doctors. It was poor planning that could have been corrected. And should be now. If not I need to have another chat with them.

Fast forward 10 years later, the chemo weakend my disks, and being sesptiple to disk degeneration already, my back show signs of a 5mm buldge. This has created off and on back problems. In 2008 I started to have this pain in my femeral nerve. The first 3 months of 2008 I had Kaiser.

At first it was great. I got right into see a Urologist, Cancer ruled out. I was then refered to pain management. Where through a series of blunders and misteps, the doctors once again did a poor job at figuring out what the pain was.

I have many surgical clips left in me. The doctors assured and even mocked my wife for claiming that was the source of the problem. After painful nerve blocks, having to go on disablity for a couple months, nearly loosing my job, I left Kaiser for my insurance.

I was lucky to get Roy Disney Jr.s old doctor. A doctor to many executives at Disney, and a kick ass doctor. He through me in the hospital for 10 days to figure out what was wrong with me.

They found a lot, but could not figure out what the pain was from. That is what my doctor wanted to be fixed.

5 doctors, a Urologist, Pain Anastisologis, Muscular Anistisiolgist, my doctor, a Neurologist all thought that sending a scope down in me to figure out what was there causing me the problems.

I was released from the hospital and went in search of a doctor that would do the surgery. UCLA rejected me since I no longer had cancer. USC Urologist threw his hands up and said he didn’t know, saw another pain specialist. Then saw 2 more Urologist that didn’t want to do the surgery. Then a general surgeon. He didn’t want to do it either, wanted to school all the other doctors for not seeing it was simply scare tissue.

2 Doctors said he was wrong, that would be on the other side, not the good side. It was effecting my last nut which just pissed me off.

Finally my doctor tossed me back into the hospital. The general surgeon’s assistant (hottie) agreed surgery would be best.

1 week to get an appointment (shit load of pain) 2 weeks for the surgery. F that, my doctor told me to go into the ER Sunday night. I was in the hospital until Tuesday.

This is now 1 year and 20 days since the problem started. They had found pressed firmly against my genital femerol nerve a surgical clip. Score a billion for Jen (wife) who said it was that all along.

It took me 9 months to recover. 6 weeks ago my back took a turn for the worse. No pain, but some bad symptoms. MRI done. But there is an added problem. My neck, which I just had an MRI done, and made the mistake of looking at the pictures. Not too thrilled and curious to how bad the doctor thinks it is. To me, it hurts like a bitch. It has been a problem since I was 11 years old. Bad neck spams through the years.

So I am not looking forward to another round of this shit.

Now I have good insurance. My insurance is very similar if not the same as the executives at Disney. Kaiser, though a sloppy machine of poorly executed processes, all were capable of finding this a lot sooner. What got me was the process, the procedures, some of these doctors were just robots going from a handbook.

The doctors were unable to work as a team to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. And I paid the price. From the cancer in Chico to the finding of the surgical clip.

Now my oncologist, when I was with him as a team, he helped people from all angels. He made more than enough money so everyone didn’t need to pay the same. It is amazing on how much the doctors want to work with what they have. But when you too much away from the doctors and put price tags on things enters in the buracracy and decision makers then you have a real problem.

It isn’t that the US has bad health care, it is that the good parts of it are so hard and made almost impossible to access. There is a fundemental problem that goes beyond the bill.

I have spent a lot of time in the Emrgency Room, Clinics, doctors offices, to see what is broken here it so over looked, but so easy to fix it makes me ill to think about it.

Where the true concern with reform is the fact that if I don’t work for a company like Disney I am boned. I am almost uninsurable. I can’t be an independent contractor, only Disney could get away with finding someone to insure me. And the insurances are the ones that put me in this position to start with. Well to some degree, cancer played a role too. I don’t like cancer, especailly cancer that goes for the balls., but that is just me. All cancers suck, lost too much to it, but after having it, at least I can make cancer jokes about it. And I have gotten out of a few thousand dollars worth of fines, and literally played the cancer card to get a friend out of a mistermeanor. But I digress.

I don’t like to brag, but healthy, I am freaking awesome! I do great work, I have a lot to be proud of, and have paid a great deal into the system. To think that those two things cannot help me. There is something wrong with the approach. Until we fix that, we are screwed.

Enough with that, my ships are back. For those still reading, check your balls, and when it comes to health care, be smart until they can catch up.