Miracle mom: Mayo surgeons cut her in half, cleared out her cancer

Makes me quite joyful and hopeful, actually...to see such a positive, loving and constructive person. She fought. She overcame. No matter for how long. Takes quite a bit to kill a person determined to live. It's also a tribute to those who innovated and fought to save her.

It's a wonderful story about the best qualities of humanity.

Thanks, Gravedancer.

Wow......

What an amazing woman.

Amazing? That takes courage! For your kids ... yeah!

Who paid for that surgery, I wonder?

Doesn't matter. If it saved her life that's all that matters and God bless those who did.

According to this story (http://www.leaderpost.com/health/Clinical+choice+when+patients+must+province/3859288/story.html) it was Manitoba Health (socialized medicine). 

Uvah, it does matter to me, because I transcribe medical reports for a living, and at the end of the night I find myself pretty heart broken over the fact that the so many of the patients I transcribe about can't even pay for their basic prescriptions, let alone have something as complicated as experimental surgery performed. 

This is really an uplifting story, but medical procedures make me queasy. It's a good thing you're asleep when they're doing all that to you (well most of the time).

I understand what you're saying k10w3. What I'm saying is this. When it comes to life saving treatments of any kind, surgical or otherwise, there should ... BE NO PRICE TAG. PERIOD!!!! Life is more important than a persons ability to pay. If they can't afford it blame the damn insurance companies, the EXTREMELY high cost of medical treatment and.........no rant here. All I'm saying is that there should be no price tag on life. Its far too precious!!! Imagine this if you will ... you have a life threatening illness. The only treatment, one that will save your life, is so expensive the insurance company will not cover it. It has happened. What do you do? Allow the insurance company to determine whether you live or die? Think about it. IMHO healthcare should be a FREEBIE! No one should have to go through that. No one!!!

Even the public health system in Australia (strained as it is) is better than nothing.

Best regards,
Steven.

Amazing that a country that invests all of it's citizen's capital in war can't find the heart to insure the poor. AND allows bankers to print free phony money at will AND sends the jobs to cheap labor AND charges monstrous debt to poor college students AND allows criminals to function in the body politic not to mention incompetent simpletons.

I wish all the best to this lady and to all the industrial slaves out there...

Actually there are programs. Even the private insurances aren't all that great. Insurance companies are showing big profits by denying care LINK. LINK.

None of that is big news, though. You put the cart before the horse: Imagine what could be done for the country/world if there was no war to support.

Unfortunately, there is. Also, expensive care isn't necessarily good care, nor is it necessarily desirable. Not everyone feels as you do...there are situations where it is better for the individual to have palliative care, and the individual might live a longer and life and have more quality that way. These things are best left to the doctor, patient and family to explore together in an informed manner.

Sorry, Uvah...no one is going to do that because no one gets a freebie on rent, food, clothing, etc. (like a college and medical school education)...it is simply not possible to expect such a thing, any more than to just walk onto an airplane to anywhere without buying a ticket or into a market and walk out with food without paying, or into a new car showroom and drive out without paying...

Nothing of value is free. In point of fact, nothing is free...period.

 

 

Only because those with the money say so. All across the healthcare field there are those who wouldn't lift a finger without getting paid for it, present company excepted. Why do you think its so lucrative. Doctors are paid big bucks to do what they do. They have little choice because of the price 'they' have to pay for an office, equipment etc. Not to mention what their insurance companies soak them for. Look at what the pharmaceutical companies charge for the medicines they produce. Research, testing and more is incredibly expensive almost obscene in some cases. I'm not so naive as to expect something for nothing, not in this reality. Its just that certain things that could improve everyone's quality of life is beyond most people's ability to pay for. Try paying rent, utilities, insurance and what have you on minimum wage. Not happening. Cost of living increases every year, taxes go up every year but does a persons paycheck reflect that increase? Hell no! The minimum wage still sits at less than eight dollars an hour. At eight dollars an hour you'd have to work eighty to ninety hours a week just to cover your rent. Forget about food, electricity and other stuff. So you tell me ... what's wrong with this picture. In nearly a hundred years Uncle Sam still can't get it right. As long as the money mongrels are in charge this is the way it is. Money is more important than anything else. Including life!!!

Put most simply, what's wrong is the upside down scale of values our society demonstrates and the hypocrisy of what it professes to value. There is an almost complete disconnect.

We 'value' education, but not teachers. We 'value' good health yet don't do what the doctor advises. The list is endless. We value entrepreneurs yet believe we have a 'right' to take IP without paying. We pay inflated prices for everything because the mass media peddles advertising and packaging more than content: We hear "Perception is reality." and believe it. Our culture is mercantile and price becomes equated with value. We "Save!" money by buying something for x instead of y yet wonder why we have no money in the bank....

Greed, "something for nothing" or "free!" pulls our eyes out of our heads and the money from our pockets. Husbands and wives both with jobs yet barely surviving because of the cost of living....and the children growing up without fathers and mothers to teach them values because they're working and exhausted by the time they get home, or bereft of them before the get go...that to drive a car you need a license yet to determine the future of the human race (have children) requires only a moment's desire. Responsibility is nil while entitlement soars.

Well, there isn't any place in the world where it's "free", but there are place where taxes pay for this, and surprisingly it does work. It's all a matter of what kind of society you want to live in and what values you believe in, but in most European countries... well, a  tax-payed common healthcare system is an accepted solution that works fine (if you look at the general health level and life expectancy).

Same thing with education, by the way. 

War is big business. People are needed to fight wars. Most people who are doing fairly well in their lives won't volunteer for the army unless they believe that there is a truly serious threat at hand (i.e. not the Iraq war). If the money spent on war and unwarranted foreign aid was put into healthcare and education, there wouldn't be enough people willing to become recruits. For some people it's join the army, or live on the streets, or go to jail for something like drug dealing. That is a horrible situation that keeps the middle class grateful for their lot, and so they keep working, and keep honest, and keep paying the lion's share of the country's taxes, because the truly wealthy won't pay squat and the truly poor can't pay squat.

The point here is that none of this came about by accident, haphazardly, or as a result of overwhelming or even unforeseen circumstances. This is a business model like any other, only on a much larger scale, where every citizen is an unwitting employee of Uncle Sam Inc. Ever notice what tends to happen to presidents who don't sound too eager for war, and start talking too much about a real peace, or work on implementing actual action plans?

Anyway, I'm just glad for Janis Ollson that she was lucky enough not to become a part of the larger statistic.

What middle class? It's been virtually annihilated.

 

Touché.

I have two close friends who have survived cancer and two other friends mothers have both passed from cancer, pretty intense when you put it all in one sentence like that. This is an incredible story not just from a medical and scientific standpoint but from a personal and emotional standpoint as well. For a patient and their family to risk a surgery that may only succeed in a sooner death for the patient is a HUGE decision. To see it work and to see people carrying on with their lives after something like that is absolutely inspiring.