Posted On: July 9, 2008, 8:18 am CDT

Posted By: Frankie Ann Goodson

I had been going to my primary care doctor for around 15 or more years. I found out later that my HMO, Health Advantage, had been paying primary care doctors to not refer their patients to specialists. I have this in writing. Therefore, I almost died of colon cancer. He never mentioned that I should have a colonoscopy. I can't imagine how I did not know to get tested. I just never heard about it. And by age 62, after I had been in the hospital for a completely different reason, I made him very angry and he sent me to have a colonoscopy. The doctor who did the colonoscopy said she could not get past the tumor to get where my doctor said he "thought he saw something. She made an appointment with a surgeon right then but did a biopsy to make sure anyway. It had gone through my colon wall but thank God not in my lympth nodes or liver. I had been telling my doctor how extremely tired I had been and he even suggested I needed a man in my life. I had surgery to get the tumor out and part of my colon. Then I got a staph infection in the hospital and had to go right back and they had to opened me back up and then given 5 days to live. I have no family at all and my "friends" scattered like gone with the wind. Well, as you can see, I am alive. If you are interested in my story I will be glad to share it with you instead of going on with it. I had surgery on 12/10/2004. It is quite a long story. Unless someone would be interested in hearing it, I will close now.

I chose not to sue because I was and still am not mentally able to go through all of that. All of the hell I went through did make me a colon cancer patient advocate big time!

Please do not mention my name.

"Maggie"
Little Rock, AR