------ On Wed, 11/4/09, Penn Pennington <pennpennington@comcast.net> wrote:

      I got a call today from "Daughters Of Charity".  I have been approved for 100% coverage, but I am not sure how far they are going to take it.  Evidently it will be for the hospital portion of the biopsy, but I don't know if they will stop at that or continue covering with what ever else I may need for this whole ordeal.  I have left a message to find out about that.  I DO know DOC does not cover the Doctor, Anesthesiology, and Pathology charges.

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His story

Earlier this year, around February, my dad was having an uncomfortableness and tightness in his abdomen.   Since my dad doesn't have insurance (he can't afford it), he put off going to the doctor.  Several months went by and this only got worse instead of better.  I'm not sure who told him he needed a CT Scan, but he knew that's what he had to do to find out what this was.  He got in touch with Faith Family Medical who was able to do a CT Scan for $75.00.

The CT Scan of his abdomen showed inflamed lymph nodes, but didn't show what was causing them to be inflamed, so they ordered another CT Scan of his chest the following day. The scan of his chest showed a mass the size of a golf ball surrounding and attached to an artery coming directly out of his heart.  Faith Family Medical scheduled an appointment with Dr. Wudel, a surgeon at St. Thomas hospital for further testing.

I went with my dad to this appointment with Dr. Wudel last week on Monday (10-26-09).  Dr. Wudel showed him the CT scans and explained that the mass is probably lymphoma, but we won't know anything until we biopsy it.  My Dad is very concerned about the cost of all these procedures, especially since he has no insurance.  Dr. Wudel said, he could schedule the biopsy for the next day, but that he should apply for financial aid through "Daughters of Charity." He said that waiting a couple of weeks for that to go through would be okay.  I was very concerned about waiting a couple of weeks, so I asked Dr. Wudel to give me the worst case scenario.  I asked him, "If my Dad does have lymphoma, and doesn't get treatment, what is his life expectancy?".  He said, "Twelve to Eighteen months from diagnosis, however this could just be an infection that can be treated with a steroid and if so, it just goes away." (What we are praying for.)

I took off work Monday and Tuesday to get all of my Dad's financial information ready for Daughters of Charity.  After speaking with a very nice lady at Daughters of Charity on Tuesday, she said to go ahead and schedule the biopsy while she was working on his application to be approved.  We called Dr. Wudel's office to schedule the biopsy and the secretary who answered the phone told me that we had to speak to Kathy, the financial aid director first before we could schedule it.  She forwarded me to her voicemail, and I left a message to call me back. She called my Dad back the next day and told him that she couldn't schedule the biopsy until the Daughters of Charity application had been approved, which could take weeks.

We finally get the call back from Daughters of Charity today (11-4-09) that my Dad has been approved.  As my Dad stated in his email, Daughters of Charity covers 100% of the hospital charges, but does NOT cover the Doctor, Anesthesiology, and Pathology charges. Who knows what will happen if this biopsy comes back and it IS lymphoma.

I'm praying that this mass, and the inflamed lymph nodes, miraculously disappear. Through God, anything is possible!

More about Lymphoma: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/lrn/lrn_0.asp