Names of the Dead

My wife of 39 years was a cancer survivor, given a clean bill of health two years after being diagnosed with the disease. In June of 2009, all her blood tests came back with normal numbers, meaning she could look forward to continuing to watch her five grandchildren and nine stepgrandchildren grow up and live their lives. But a month later she started to feel some extreme fatigue she never encountered before. After several tests, including a bone marrow draw, Nancy was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic syndrome, an aggressive form of blood cancer. Once the diagnosis was made, her hemotologist/oncologist prescribed Revlimid to treat the disease, a medication found to have strong positive results in previous treatments. Our insurance provider, however, denied the request for treatment using Revlimid on Sept. 22 stating she did not meet the necessary requirements for this particular medicine, and going against the medical advice of oncologist. An appeal was made by the doctor strongly urging approval based on a series of medical facts showing the treatment was medically necessary in order for her to fight the disease. Again, Humana denied the claim stating this form of treatment was not medically necessary and other forms of treatment needed to be administered instead. With the drug manufacturer intervening on her behalf, the medicine was shipped directly to my house. By that time, however, it was too late. Nancy was already in the hospital and beginning to deteriorate, she had stopped eating most solid foods and was rapidly dropping weight. She was never able to start the Revlimid treatment and on Oct. 23 she lost her fight as the doctors determined her blood cancer rapidly turned into a form of Luekemia, which is exactly what has happened in other patients who did not receive treatment in time. There was no guarantee that had she received the Revlimid in a timely manner that it would have saved her life or even extended it. But now that is a question that will never be answered because Humana determined that it wasn't medically necessary to treat her disease. - Einar Erlendsson