You can't always get what you want.

[jono]

My point in bringing up staging and my experience at SCCA was really just to point out that as OG says, it's difficult to assess quality of care and that this is compounded by the fact that the one seemingly objective measure can be manipulated. Knowing whether it is or not is probably impossible: you could dig into an institution's numbers but how would you account for the fact that people with later stage cancers are more likely to seek out institutions with more experience in them?

I don't think the only reason for upstaging in my case was stats. In fact, the associate professor doing the teaching stated quite matter of factly that he'd never had anyone complain about having been given worse expectations and exceeding them. If I see him I guess I'll be the first because the imaginary number created real life problems and I'd have been better off (and one could argue more accurately staged) if they had simply refused to assign a number ahead of a PET, as did all the other doctors I saw.

Some of that comes down to experience fighting with insurance (which is a very significant part of this whole process) and some I chalk up to simple academia. I'm not sure how to further describe that concisely, or if it really has any relevance so I'll leave it at that. All I can say with certainty is that there exists an apparent ethical conflict when an institution's marketing can take advantage of mistakes or a consistent reporting bias.

[iceman]

I don't think that there's any doubt that all bureaucracies take as their primary mission their continued existence, success and growth. All, not just medical bureaucracies. So if there's a way to work the numbers in their favor even basically decent ethical people who work for bureaucracies will have a hard time resisting the urge (and their colleagues' urgings) to follow that path. It's always caveat emptor in all such dealings and good on you Jono for doing your own due diligence.

[plugboots]

Ronnie plays an appropriate song:

[Meadow Skipper]

Thanks for writing that shit up jono, it rings of truth. I sincerely wish you the best from deep in my heart.

This is one of the better discussions I've seen here.

Fuck cancer.

[Benny Profane]

Ronnie plays an appropriate song:

Awesome choice of song (Jimmy Reed, the patron saint of alcoholics everywhere), and, it starts out well, but notice how he loses it slowly towards the end. Just sorta lacks energy. Not saying it's the effects of cancer at all, more like, he's old, and just can't play at the pace he's used to. There's a reason a lot of old blues guys performed sitting down.
Was watching a thing on MTV live with Fogerty doing a concert. Same thing. Starts out punchy, but, just tires out in a short time. I once heard Clapton say that there is no way he could do Cream stuff even at 45. Too physically taxing. Can't reproduce youth plus speed and coke, even with all his riches. Saw Dick Dale recently, and he can still whip it out at his age, but, has developed a Vegas like schtick that involves a lot of long storytelling breaks. Playing rock and blues fast and hard is a young man's game.

[old goat]

I saw Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson play in their 80's (heard Ralph Stanley sing the same night). Those guys could still play lightning fast and clean. They did play sitting down though.

[plugboots]

Ronnie slows down at the end because he's playing to 8 news dorks in a boring studio at the end of the episode. That was almost 5 years ago.

[iceman]

Go see Jeff Beck.

[jono]

2) jono, not sure if I'm reading this correctly, but you seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder about SCCA having "unfairly" upstaged you, therefore deciding you weren't a surgical candidate..? Is that a correct assumption?

I can see how it reads that way, but honestly I'm not all that worked up over it. This discussion probably got SCCA as much attention in my head as they've had in 6 months. Too many unknowns to worry about it--the way it all worked out they played a role in a very unlikely sequence of events that got me to the right doc. I can't even prove a) that they were wrong or b) that, right or wrong, the delay getting the PET didn't actually save my life. Course, the ride ain't over, and the impact of missing peak disease by waiting until a round of chemo is over is more likely negative then positive (most likely it changed nothing, of course), but one never knows.

I went into more detail on that because it seemed like it might be useful to someone else. For me it's the past. I'm loathe to say anything negative about any of this, really. There's plenty of that it there. Mine's a really long story now and it's a rollercoaster for sure, but the positive experiences along the way have been numerous and mind blowing and I have no regrets.

Except maybe cunting up Ronnie's thread. How is it these guys all have the ageless hair and the two hundred year old faces?

[Benny Profane]

Like I said, Hair Club For Men.